Soulmates
by Mystic83
Summary: Sydney Bristow always believed in the concept of a soulmate. That you're meant to find the one person out there and spend the rest of your life with them. Haunting dreams start to make her question the one thing she had always instinctively known SV, SSa
1. And So It Begins

****

"Do you think you can be in love with two people at the same time?"

~Michael Vaughn  


"I believe if you took the time to hear the comprehensive offer, you might actually say yes."

~Julian Sark

"Have you ever felt that someone is your soulmate?" 

~Sydney Bristow

Sydney hadn't been able to get a good night's sleep in weeks. If she wasn't in some foreign city stealing some random artifact, her job usually kept her up half the night thinking, and when her mind was racing, she could never seem to drift off no matter how hard she tried. Sighing, she got out of bed and slipped on a pair of sweatpants. Jogging always seemed to help.

She almost laughed as the thought popped into her head that maybe it was dangerous to be going for a run at three in the morning. A spy should be able to take care of herself on a deserted street in the nice part of Los Angeles or they have no right to call themselves a spy.

Her body moved into a steady rhythm almost immediately after beginning. The sound of her feet hitting the pavement had always been a source of soothing for her. It has also always been a way for her to work out her frustration.

"Which is probably why I end up running at least two times everyday," she muttered to herself as she rounded the corner of her block. She tried her best not to think about Vaughn as she was running. Every day it was getting harder and harder for her not to reach across the debriefing table and just kiss him with all her might.

She kept trying to imagine how much harder the job would be if she tried to have a relationship with her handler. The sneaking around would make the job a lot harder to concentrate on. Not that she was succeeding in the concentration department currently.

She grabbed her head and screamed lightly when she realized that in trying not to think about him, she had actually started thinking about him. She pushed his image out of her head and tried to focus on her footsteps on the pavement for the rest of the run. This run was supposed to be relaxing, and all it was doing was making her tenser.

Usually, by the end of her run, she was feeling energized and invigorated. Tonight was different, though. The run and the concentration needed not to think of Vaughn had left her exhausted. Which, in her mind, was a good thing because it meant she might actually be able to fall asleep at a decent hour.

She slipped off her sweatpants and ran to the bathroom for a quick shower. She understood that showers always seemed to leave her more alert, but it was a matter of being dirty and sweaty or getting a good night's sleep. As much as she wanted to sleep, she wanted to get the dirty feeling off her skin more.

When she emerged, she was surprised to realize that the shower hadn't woken her up at all. In fact, it made her more relaxed and sleepy. Throwing off her robe, she slid in between the sheets and slowly drifted off.

~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ 

__

Sydney stared down the hallway she was walking. There was a door at the far end that was painted completely black, and then there was a door right next to her that had a deep blue coat of paint on it. The rest of the hallway was painted a very vibrant white that hurt her eyes. In the back of her head, she felt something urge her to choose a door.

Remembering how tired she was most of the time, she chose the door that was closest to her. Opening it, she saw a small Irish pub that seemed to be bustling with activity. That voice in the back of her head was urging her to step through the doorway. Curious, she went along with the voice.

As she crossed the precipice, she felt a small jolt in her body. It was as if someone had shocked her with electricity for a millisecond. She could feel her skin buzzing slightly, and her body felt a little more tense than normal.

Sydney stared at her surroundings again. This little pub didn't seem strange anymore. It seemed almost familiar, like she had been here before at some point. She shook away the idea that it almost felt like home. That was impossible. She knew her home didn't involve a small pub in Ireland. "I must be tired," she thought.

She walked across the floor to a small table in the back. A lot of the people, upon seeing her, shouted Catherine and held their glasses up to her in an informal salute. She nodded shyly at each person who said her name. "My name?!?" Sydney thought to herself. "Where did that come from?"

The table seemed odd in its surroundings. Every other inch of the pub was filled with activity and shouting, but this table seemed to be in a quiet little corner. No one was even coming near it. In fact, now that she had sat down, no one was even paying any attention to her.

In the back of her head, she identified this table as the one she always sat at because… because… She strained to remember. Because she met someone extremely important here. The people in the pub were keeping some kind of secret for her. She came here to meet this person almost everyday.

Sydney was almost sure that it was a man she was waiting for. This man met her here because they weren't allowed to talk with each other in the public's eye. It wasn't proper. "Where is this coming from?" she thought.

She looked up when the pub became quiet as a man in a cloak entered. After a moment, the people seemed to purposefully try to make noise and keep from looking at the pub's newest arrival. It was almost as if they were trying to cover something up, and they weren't too good at it. The man shook the rain off of himself as he pulled back his hood.

Sydney gasped softly when she saw the man's face. It was Vaughn.

Vaughn seemed to hear the small sound she made and turned to look at her. His eyes and face seemed a lot colder than she had remembered. He had a large, jagged scar along his left cheek bone that she wanted to say was caused in a duel for her honor. "Duel for my honor?" she thought. "Where am I coming up with this crap?"

She began to feel uncomfortable at the way he was looking at her and stared down at where her hands were folded in her lap. She half hoped he would come over to talk to her and half hoped that he would just turn around and walk out of the pub.

Seeming to read her thoughts, he hesitated before walking over to the table where she was sitting. He sat down across from her softly without uttering a word.

"Hello, Sir Francois," she whispered without making eye contact.

"Lady Catherine, you asked me to meet you here."

"As I do every day I see you. I wanted to tell you that I'm engaged to be married to our neighbor, the Laird Sinclair." She paused to hear his reaction. When he didn't say or react in any way, she reached out and grasped his hand. "Don't you have anything to say to this news?"

While all this was happening, Sydney was slightly freaking out. Words were coming out of her mouth and her body was doing actions that she never intended. It was almost as if someone had taken over her body. Or this scene had been scripted and no matter how hard she tried she couldn't stray from the concrete actions and words.

"What do you want me to say, Cat? We knew that you would be married off someday. It was inevitable."

"I don't want to marry that horrible man. I want to stay on my family's land with you."

"That's impossible. If your father knew about our romance, he would kill me on the spot. A lady is not permitted to fall in love with her protector. I am just a simple farm boy who happens to be good at the art of combat. If I didn't have that, I probably would never have met you. You can't be allowed to fall in love with a commoner."

"But I did," Sydney said with a smile.

"I can't protect you forever. God, I want to. But I cannot."

"Won't you just take me away from here? I hate this life that my father forces me to live. I hate everything about it. Except for you. Every day, I thank God that I have you in my life. You are my life."

"And you are mine." He smiled at her. "I will take you away from here if that is truly what you want. We'll be on the run for the rest of our lives."

"But we'll be together." She took her hand out of his and lightly touched his chin so that he was looking her in the eye. "Have you ever felt that someone is your soul mate?"

She knew the answer immediately by the look on his face.

~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ 

Sydney woke with a start and looked around at her surroundings. She was exactly where she had been when she fell asleep from her relaxing, post-run shower. Picking up the robe, she threw it on and looked in the mirror. She looked the same, heavy bags under the eyes and all. However, her mind was racing. That dream had been way too realistic and just plain strange for her liking.

"I never knew I had such kinky, medieval fantasies looked up in my head," she said as she threw herself back down onto the bed. "How the hell am I supposed to go into work tomorrow without blushing every time Vaughn looks at me? I can't just explain to him that I had a dream we had a forbidden romance in the Middle Ages, and I can't look him in the eye because all I can think of is how he was going to steal me away from a life I hated." She began to rub her face lightly with her hands. "Which is exactly what I wish he would do for me now."

She rolled over and checked the clock on her end table. It read six o'clock in the morning. Sighing, she lifted herself out of bed. "Time for another run."

About to throw on her sweatpants and a t-shirt, she realized that maybe a cold shower would be a better choice of action. The dream was still bothering her in more ways than one.

~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ 

The drive to work was uneventful, though Sydney couldn't help but peer into the rear view mirror every ten seconds the whole way from her house to the parking garage. The dream had slightly unnerved her. She had always been pretty successful at keeping her overactive imagination in check. This time it couldn't be controlled. It was going crazy with off-the-wall theories. Her favorite cooked up scheme involved some evil adversary who had created a dream machine that let him enter and interfere with her dreams specifically to foil the CIA's plans to take down SD-6 and the Alliance.

"I need to control that," she muttered as she reached for her bag and got out of the car. Her stomach flipped slightly when she saw Vaughn get out of his car from across the parking lot. He waved to her, and she could feel her whole face redden. At least she was far enough away that he wouldn't see.

"Hey, Syd," he called when he had jogged close enough to heard. "How'd you sleep last night?"

She narrowed her eyes at him, wondering what exactly he knew about her dreams the night before. Her imagination was already coming up with a scheme that Vaughn and Weiss had figured out a way to enter her dreams to see what she was thinking about. Mentally scolding herself for that crazy idea, she tried to act normal. "Why do you ask?"

"Don't get suspicious, Agent Bristow." He held his hands up defensively. "I've noticed that you've been looking a little tired lately. Figured you hadn't been getting much sleep."

"What gave it away?"

"You almost fell asleep on Kendall in our last mission briefing."  


"Yeah, you're right. I haven't really been getting much sleep. My imagination has been running crazy, and that keeps me up for most of the night almost every night."

"Well, if you need to talk at night, you know that you can give me a call. I'm the perfect companion for midnight pizza in a warehouse."

She smiled at him as he walked away. As soon as he was out of sight, she threw her hands up in exasperation. How was she supposed to interpret a comment like that? They were colleagues. An agent and a handler whose close relationship was already frowned upon by their bosses. She didn't even want to think about what would happen if she took him up on his offer. How was she supposed to reason a non-mission related call to him at three in the morning to ask him to meet her for pizza?

There was a mound of papers sitting on her desk when she arrived. Groaning, she remembered that Weiss had mentioned something the day before about not having a mission for her to either go on or research about. In laymen's terms, that mean a massive stack of paperwork that had been piling up would be thrown on your desk by morning.

Throwing her bag and keys on the floor next to her chair, she sat down and grabbed the first sheet. It seemed like there was an operative who angered the French government by single-handedly destroying one of their main vineyards.

"Who the hell would destroy a vineyard in the line of duty?" Sydney asked herself as she flipped to the second page. When she saw what it said, she almost laughed out loud. "Oh. I guess it was me. Oops."

Sadly, that was the high point of the stack of papers. The rest were just the mandatory paper work an agent has to do as a post-debriefing debriefing. Documentation was stressed heavily at the CIA, much to her displeasure and discomfort. She did notice that a lot of the paperwork in her pile seemed to have been plucked off of Weiss's workload and put on hers. She would have to remember to yell at him the next time he stopped by.

After about two hours of straight filling out of forms, Sydney felt her head begin to dip. The lack of sleep she got and the unsettling dream seemed to be causing her to drift off in the one place she wanted to be her sharpest. She didn't have the strength to stop herself and leaned down to rest her arms and head on the desk.

~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ 

__

Sydney found herself in the same hallway as her previous dream. There were the same two doors again, black and midnight blue. The only difference was the blue door has a small Celtic symbol etched onto the middle of it. It reminded her of the setting of her Irish dream that had Vaughn as its star.

She decided that since she knew what was behind that door, she'd follow her curiosity through the other, black door. Opening it up, she saw it was just a small room. As crazy and bustling the last scene was, this was the exact opposite. It was a completely serene, calm scene. There was a window open and the light curtains were blowing in the wind. The wind was blowing in sweltering hotness which made the air sticky. She could hear the voices of young boys echoing through the streets as they tried to sell their newspapers.

Using her high school history knowledge, she placed herself in turn of the century New York. Why she was there was anyone's guess? In the back of her head, she found herself hoping it had something to do with Vaughn. Maybe this was another one of her sleep-deprived fantasies.

Not thinking twice, Sydney stepped into the room and felt the same jolt in her body that occurred the first time she walked through one of these mystery doors. The buzzing and tenseness wore off a little quicker now that she was expecting it. Looking down at herself, she realized that she was no longer wearing the business suit she had put on that morning. In its place was a white blouse and long blue skirt. She reached up to feel her hair and discovered that it was about nine inches shorter than she remembered.

Shaking off her weird appearance and the growing nervousness in her stomach, she went to close the window. She stopped abruptly when she saw there was a young man sleeping on the fire escape.

"Benny," she whispered lightly. Inside, the same body snatched feeling she had had previously unsettled Sydney. These weren't her words, and she was pretty sure what she was about to do wouldn't be her actions, either.

"Sarah," the boy said as he awoke and looked up at her. "I didn't want to wake you last night."

Sydney almost jumped out of her skin when she saw Benny's face. It was a perfect copy of Sark's. Thankfully, her mind and body were on autopilot, so the shock didn't show at all. "You could have come in, and you know it. Benny, you're my best friend. I can't have you sleeping with the stars."  


"It's beautiful out here. One night we should watch the stars come up. And then you can stick around for the sunrise."

"My mother would kill me if she knew that I was staying out with a ruffian like you all night."

"But I want to show you the one thing that comes close to describing what I feel for you. A sunrise is almost as beautiful as you. Please. Just for one night, run away with me."  


Sydney smiled down at him. "You were always such a romantic fool. I love you, Benny."

"I love you, too." He went from romantic fool to complete seriousness without a thought. "Which is why I hate pulling you into all of this."

"I agreed to help you rob that store today. You need the money to settle the gambling debts. I'm not about to let a group of thugs take you away from me."

"I don't like the fact that you won't stay home."

"I'm not going to leave you by yourself to do this. You're not as smart as me and you know it! If you want to pull this robbery off, you need me by your side. I'm the only one that can distract the clerk while you slip into the store and steal the money. Don't you trust my charms?"

"I've seen those charms at work firsthand. I know you'll do well. I just don't want to be the man to drag you down. You belong to a higher class than thieves and crooks."

"I belong with you." She touched him lightly on the top of his head. "We're two halves of a whole. I'm the brains and the looks, and you're the clever, resourceful one."

Sark stood up and grabbed her hand before she could pull it back inside the window. "You've been my best girl since we were seven, Sarah. I think I've loved you since then. I know that I'm a no-good, troublesome bum. And everyone you've ever met has told you to get as far away from me as you can. But I think you can make me a better person if you're willing to keep trying. I want you to keep trying. I know I don't have much money, but I would love it if you agreed to spend the rest of your life with me."

Sydney could feel the tears welling up in her eyes as she leaned her head outside the window and gently kissed him. "There's never been anyone else for me but you, Benny."

~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ 

Sydney shot straight up in the air as she heard loud slam. Looking around wildly, she saw Vaughn standing in front of her and a new pile of paperwork sitting on her desk in a wild pile.

"Snoozing on the job?" he asked with a smile. She looked up at him guiltily and then back down at the paperwork. He took a seat in the chair next to hers. "Who were you dreaming of?"

"Sark," she answered absentmindedly. When she realized what she said, she froze in place.

"You were dreaming of that cocky bastard?" He hadn't been expecting that response from her.

She tried to recover quickly. "I think it has something to do with that last mission I was on. He got the better of me for the first time in months. It must have bothered me a lot more than I thought."

Vaughn accepted that explanation readily and added one of his own. "Yeah. It was probably that and the fact that you haven't been sleeping so well. Dreams can be really funny."

Weiss walked over in time to hear that last comment. "My mother always told me to never shrug off what your dreams are telling you. It's your subconscious talking, Eric. It's trying to get you to understand. If you want, I can help you reason them out."

"I'll keep that in mind," she said.

Vaughn stood up. "Is Kendall ready for us, Weiss?"

Weiss nodded, and the two men left Sydney's presence. She barely noticed. Her mind was trying to process what her subconscious was trying to tell her with a dream about a medieval Vaughn being her soul mate and a turn of the century Sark being the only one for her.


	2. The Plot Thickens

A mission to Cancun sounded like the best remedy to Sydney's fatigue problem. She couldn't thank her father enough for pulling some strings to get her and Vaughn assigned to this completely easy, bordering on luxurious mission. The only problem was the plane ride.

Her father had gone all out and got them a pair of aliases as a new money couple who's jet setting all over the world. That meant they were flying in the nicest jet imaginable. Under normal circumstances, this would be great.

However, at this very moment, the combination of the soft whirr of the engines and the light up and down bobbing of the jet was slowly lulling her to sleep. Sleep was the last place she wanted to be. The dreams hadn't returned since the first two, but it seemed she lived in a constant fear. They were so unsettling.

"Don't fight it, Syd," she heard Vaughn whisper. He was sitting across from her on the plan, reading the lasted New York bestseller. "You're tired, so go to sleep. Nothing's going to happen. I promise."

She almost laughed. The only way he could keep that promise was if he made sure she didn't dream at all when she fell asleep. Too tired to argue, though, she shut her eyes.

~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ 

__

Sydney was almost relieved when she found herself back in the white hallway. The fact that she hadn't come back to this place in over a week was both eased her fears and made them greater. The doors that were on opposite parts of the hall were now side by side.

Standing in front of the black one, Sydney gently rested her hand on it. She wasn't sure which door she was supposed to enter this time and was hoping that touching them would give her a sign. The door was hot to the touch. It reminded her of the way her car felt after it had been sitting out in the sun for a whole day.

Moving on, she walked to the second door. The blue one still had a Celtic symbol on it. She traced the wood burns with her fingers. Nothing happened. Nothing came to her.

Sighing, she pushed the blue door open and walked through the threshold, welcoming the familiar jolt.

She found herself standing in a pile of hay in a barn. Seeing herself in a broken piece of mirror that was hung on the wall, she gasped. Her hair was suddenly pulled back from her head, and she was in a green dress that came down to her knees. She was carrying a tray of medical supplies.

"Genevieve, what are you doing standing around?" screamed a voice from one of the horse stalls.

Sydney felt herself begin to run towards the sound of the voice. There was another woman in the barn with her who was stocking up medical supplies and organizing them into the stall.

"The men are going to be arriving soon. We need to get ready."

"Yes, Samantha," she heard her voice timidly say.

Inside, she felt a large amount of frustration. Focusing, she tried to get specifics on where and who she was.

She was in France during World War II. She wasn't French but rather an English woman helping take care of some of the wounded. Help was scarce, and she was hoping to catch a glimpse of her brother, who had joined up a couple years ago. They hadn't heard from him in six months.

The frustration came from the fact that their assignment wasn't going to be carried out the way she thought. She had expected to get a few English soldiers who had minor injuries and needed a little rehabilitation before they were thrown back on the front. Instead, the United States army was bringing in a few German prisoners of war who needed a little medical attention.

Sydney sighed and rushed back out to the truck the army had brought them full of supplies a few hours earlier. She loaded up her empty tray again and turned to race back to the barn. Making the turn around the side of the barn, she ran right into a wall.

The wall turned out to be a man, she realized as she looked up at his face. She couldn't make out much because the sun was shining straight into her eyes.

"Pardon me, Fraulein. I seem to have lost my way."

Sydney grabbed the offered hand and pulled herself up. Wiping off the front of her dress, she muttered, "I know this whole thing wouldn't be a pleasant experience when I heard it was German soldiers we would be receiving, but this is just bloody ridiculous. I mean, can't you see where you're go--"

Her voice got caught in her throat as she saw the face of Michael Vaughn on the body of this German soldier she knew she should hate. In the back of her head, she heard a voice whispering something about how handsome the man was.

"I'm sorry. It was rude of me to sneak up on you," Vaughn said. "I apologize. My name is Lukas Klein. I was supposed to find someone named Genevieve Law to tell her that Samantha needs more morphine."

"Well, you found her." Sydney began walking. She felt Vaughn hobble along trying his best to keep up with her. "You're limping. Are you hurt?"

"Just some ricocheted shrapnel in my leg. I'll be fine. Thank you for your concern, Fraulein."

"Call me Genevieve, and I'm not concerned for you. All I'm concerned about is keeping this job long enough to find my brother." Sydney tried with all her might to open the barn door, but it seemed to be stuck.

"You shouldn't worry so much." Vaughn stepped forward and hefted the door open with one mighty tug.

"The worry keeps me alive."

Sydney felt a sudden whirr in her body. She was no longer in a barn. She was standing in a meadow filled with wild flowers. Looking down, she saw a note in her hand. It pleaded with her to come to the meadow at noon. She looked up and saw that the sun was about to set. Looks like Genevieve was late for her meeting.

"I thought you weren't going to come."

Sydney spun around to see Vaughn, or rather Lukas, leaning up against a tree. He was no longer in his German army uniform but a simple white shirt and pants and a farmer's hat. She felt herself silently smiling at the way he looked so comfortable in this setting.

  
"I didn't want to come," she heard herself respond. "Samantha would kill me if she found out I was stealing away to meet with one of our prisoners."

"I'm happy you did," Vaughn said as he stood up and walked toward her. Sydney noticed that he wasn't limping as much. The whirring in her body must have symbolized the passage of time. It seemed like Genevieve Law had spent the time skipped over getting to know Lukas Klein a little better.

Sydney knew that she shouldn't be letting this dream take her in so much, but she was a hopeless romantic at heart and could recognize true love when she saw it. Or maybe she was just projecting her feelings for Vaughn on her dreams again.

"What do you want, Lukas?"

"I wanted to give you this." He held out a parcel for her to take.

She took the parcel from him and ripped it open. Inside was the book "A Tree Grows In Brooklyn". She looked up at him in surprise.

"You mentioned to me a few days ago that you had heard how great this book was and how much you wanted to read it. I traded a carton of cigarettes and my Luger to an American soldier passing through your medical camp the other day for it."

Sydney could feel her eyes tear up. She knew in her heart that no man had ever made such a selfish gesture for Genevieve before. "Thank you," she managed to choke out before she started crying. Her body gave out, and she crumpled into a heap on the ground.

Vaughn immediately sat down beside her and started apologizing profusely. "I'm sorry. I didn't know it would upset you so much. You don't have to take it."

Sydney looked up at this German soldier and almost started crying again. That famous worry face she had always seen on Vaughn's face when he was talking business with her was on Lukas Klein's face. Before she realized what she was doing, she had reached out and pulled his face close to hers. Her lips gently brushed his, barely making contact.

"It's the nicest thing anyone's ever done for me," she whispered looking into his eyes.

"You shouldn't do that," he answered, referring to their almost kiss. "You could be labeled a traitor for fraternizing with me." He stood up. "I'm not good for you. I was wrong to try to get you to talk with me."

"Don't go," she heard herself whisper as she watched him walk off into the setting sun.

Vaughn turned to look back at her. With a small tip of his hat, he was gone.

~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ 

"Sydney," Vaughn whispered, shaking her gently. She woke up and looked at him in confusion. "We've landed in Cancun. Are you okay?"

"Yeah, never been better." She wiped her eyes and took a deep breath. Vaughn handed her the bag she had beside her and held out his hand to help her up out of her seat. Her heart skipped a beat as she made a parallel between this moment and the moment where Lukas first met Genevieve.

"Are you sure you're all right?" Vaughn asked, noticing the starry eyed, far off look that was on her face.

"I promise I am," Sydney said as she grasped his hand and stood up.

They got the rest of their gear together without another word. It wasn't an awkward silence. In fact, it was quite comfortable. Walking down off the jet, Sydney looked over at Vaughn. "Have you ever read A Tree Grows In Brooklyn?"

"That was random, Syd."

"Have you?"

"It was my favorite book when I was little. Why?"

"I've never read it. But I've always wanted to."

"I have a copy at home. I'll let you borrow it when we get back."

Sydney nodded and they returned to their comfortable silence all the way into the airport.

When they were inside the airport, their goal was to locate a rather well to do Argentine businessman named Pablo Boreo-Garcia. The mission was simple. Sydney, pretending to be a high-class prostitute, would go up to Boreo-Garcia and proposition him. While doing this, she would slip her hand into his coat pocket and retrieve a disk that had the locations of a few key SD-6 facilities that Sydney didn't have enough authorization to know about. Vaughn would monitor her progress from a maintenance room that had been converted into a temporary mission center.

Everything went according to plan up until the point where Sydney was supposed to bump into Boreo-Garcia. Vaughn, just seconds earlier, had confirmed that Boreo-Garcia was in place, but she couldn't see him anywhere.

"Maybe if I didn't have this hideous green tinted glasses to match my hot green latex mini dress," she muttered. She would have to talk to Kendall about these mission outfits when she got back. They needed to hire someone with a little style to start selecting her outfits instead of the horny, middle-aged man who seemed to be doing it now. At least then maybe the person would know that a high-class hooker wouldn't be caught dead in a dress like this.

"Vaughn, I don't see him," she said into her earpiece.

"The computer says he's standing ten yards behind you. The tracking device our agents placed on him an hour earlier hasn't malfunctioned or been tampered with. So it has to be him."

Sydney scanned around her and wasn't surprised when her eyes rested on a very familiar head of blond hair. "Sark," she growled.

"Sydney, if Sark is there, we should just abort this mission. The objective isn't important enough for you to confront him."

Sydney bit her bottom lip and made a split second decision. She took out her earpiece and flung it into a nearby trash container. Leaving her one last ounce of dignity behind, she walked up to him. "How did you get the tracking device off him, Sark?"

"Agent Bristow," Sark said as his eyes took in her appearance. "What? Is the CIA and SD-6 not paying you enough?"

"Very funny. Give me one reason why I shouldn't kick your ass right now."

Sark pointed behind her. Turning, she caught sight of Pablo Boreo-Garcia walking down the concourse. "This'll have to wait for another day."

"I hope that was a promise," Sark called as Sydney tried to catch up to her target.

Sydney hated leaving Sark behind. It had slowly become her main goal in her job to find some reason to take that man into US custody and prosecute him for all the times he's annoyed the hell out of her. But, at this moment, the mission was more important.

She caught up with her target and did her best to worm her way in to stand next to him. When she got close enough, she whispered a rather dirty suggestion into his ear. That made him pay attention to her and while his mind was on her proposition, she did her job and lifted the disk out of his coat pocket and into her purse.

The Argentine muttered some thing about whipped cream and a leather belt which gave Sydney the perfect excuse to leave. She slapped him hard across the face and began screaming in Spanish that she was an escort and escorts don't do that sort of thing.

Laughing, she sashayed away from her target. She did a quick scan to make sure that no one was watching her and that Sark was no longer in the terminal before ducking into the room Vaughn was occupying. "I got the disk."

"What the hell happened to the feed, Sydney?" he immediately asked upon seeing her.

"My earpiece must have sorted out," she lied. "Sark had to have some device that blocked out the transmitter waves. But let's not focus on that. I got the disk."

"And by coming in here, you compromised your alias."

"I'm sorry. But with Sark on the loose, I didn't want to have to carry this disk on my person for the next eight hours. So I took a chance by coming in here to hand it off to you early."

Vaughn sighed. "I'm sorry. That was a little insensitive. I know you're feeling a little put out because of the outfit."

"Don't bring it up," Sydney said glaring at him.

Vaughn shut the laptop he had been working on and put it into its case. "Here's what we're going to do. We obviously can't both go back to the jet. There's too much of a risk that Boreo-Garcia will connect both of your aliases. So, I'll go back alone within the hour. When I'm safely in the air, I'll contact the CIA. They'll book you on the first commercial flight back to Los Angeles under your Emma Walker alias."

"It'll probably be a while before they find me a flight out of here that has an opening." She bit her lip in nervousness. "I ruined your vacation, didn't I?"

"Not really. This mission wasn't on the same level of difficulty you and I are used to. It was like a walk in the park, so we'll consider that my vacation. Besides, I'll have a little downtime back in L.A. while I wait for you to join me there."

"None the less, I'm sorry for screwing things up by breaking mission protocol."

"It's nothing new, Syd. You do it all the time." He smiled and threw a bag to her. "I brought you this in case I had an opportunity to give it to you."

Sydney opened the bag to see a pair of jeans and a t-shirt. "Aw, Vaughn. You shouldn't have."

"I know how much that outfit's been bothering you. Plus, now you have a lot of time to wait things out." The way he was looking at her was slightly unsettling. It reminded her of the way the hooded Vaughn had looked at her when he entered the Irish pub in her dream.

"I should be going," she said motioning towards the door. He hadn't broken his gaze.

  
"Yeah," Vaughn said. The tension between them seemed to be igniting. It was always at moments like these that Sydney felt her will to not break the rules begin to falter. This would be the perfect moment to just give him a quick goodbye kiss. If their lives were normal, she could do that.

Knowing that one of them had to break up whatever it was that was in the air, she opened the door and smiled weakly at him before exiting. "Thanks for taking care of everything. I'll see you in L.A."

He nodded, and she was out the door.

~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ 

Waiting an hour in the worst airport gift shop on the planet wasn't her idea of fun. When she figured she had give Vaughn enough time to do what he had planned, she made her way to the ticket counter and checked in as Emma Walker. Her flight didn't leave for another eight hours.

Sighing, she picked up the small bag of equipment Vaughn had handed her before she left the maintenance room and made her way down to Gate 29. There were only a handful of people sitting in the chairs. Sydney located a rather comfortable looking section and threw her pack down into one and herself into another.

This was normally the time where she would get out a book and start to read. But she hadn't been planning on this long wait so she hadn't come prepared. The gift shop had only had one dollar trashy, smut novels. And a trashy novel was the one thing she didn't need right now.

Her eyelids began to droop as the post-mission energy high wore off. She knew that falling asleep in the middle of a foreign airport with no one to watch over or protect her wasn't the smartest thing to do. But it seemed that these days sleep only came when it wanted to, not when it was convenient for her.

~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ 

__

"This damn hallway again," Sydney grumbled as she found herself in very familiar surroundings. Knowing the routine, she went right up to the two doors. The blue one now had a tree engraved on it in the same way that the Celtic symbol had been. Knowing that if she stuck with the pattern she should go through the black door, she felt her hand on the handle of the blue door wondering what would happen if she went against her instinct.

She pushed the door open and saw what was almost like a movie. It was the same World War II scene that had been behind the door before. Except this time she wasn't a part of it. She could see Genevieve and Lukas talking frantically in the barn. There was screaming and yelling going on around them.

Sydney saw a shadow fall over them, and both were flung to the ground from an explosion. The barn began to slowly burn. She watched Lukas haul himself up with all his might and hobble over to where Genevieve lay. Cradling her body, both he and Sydney watched as the barn burned around them.

The scene was so distressing that Sydney felt the need to help get these two young lovers out. She went through the doorway and met with unexpected results.

She had gone through the door and came right back out into the hallway. It seemed like her mind wouldn't let her go out of order. And she thought she now understood why that was. She had found out what had happened to Genevieve and Lukas after she had woken up from her previous dream. Her realization was she would probably have been better off not knowing.

She took a deep breath and opened the black door. The scene was a desert farm that didn't look to be too prosperous. Not wanting to delay it any longer, she stepped over the threshold and into the familiar time jolt.

Once her body had settled in, she closed her eyes and began to concentrate. She didn't get far; just enough to learn her name was Cassie, when she heard someone bellowing that very name.

"Yes, Uncle Geoff?" she called.

"I don't want you daydreaming your life away. There are things to be done if we want to respect your parent's dying wishes of making this farm as well off as it once was.

"Yes, Uncle Geoff." Sydney felt the weight of a bucket in her arms and realized that she must be getting some water. Letting her feet direct her walking, it wasn't surprising that they did indeed take her right to a well about five hundred yards off.

She also wasn't surprised to see a man who looked like Sark leaning against the well.

"Good afternoon, miss," he said in a slow, southern drawl.

"Good afternoon, sir. If you'll excuse me, I'll just get some water and be out of your way." She made a move to pull the bucket that was floating in the well to the surface.  


Sark placed his hand on hers to stop her action. "Well, miss, you see, that's where we have a problem. I don't want you to get out of my way."

"Take your hands off me," Sydney said. When the man didn't immediately do so, she smacked him hard under the chin with the butt of her hand. There was a satisfying crack of bone meeting bone.

The man wasn't fazed for that long. He rubbed his jaw with one hand and grabbed Sydney's arm harshly with the other. "I was going to do this nicely. But now I think I'm going to have to forget that notion."

Before she could blink, Sydney found herself flung over his shoulder and being marched in the opposite way of her home. "What the hell do you think you're doing?" she screamed.

"Well, you have a foul, little mouth on you, don't you?" the man said with a chuckle. "My name is Toby. I'm your kidnapper."  
  
That shut up Sydney for a moment. She knew in the back of her mind that what Sark was saying was true. In this scenario, she had never met him before in her life. They weren't familiar friends or lovers or anything typical of her other dreams. "Why are you kidnapping me?" she stammered.

"Because you are the niece of a wealthy landowner. A landowner who happens to have stolen quite a sum of money from my brother. I intend to get that money back. If I don't, well, I guess your uncle won't have to worry about his little niece getting into trouble anymore."

"Don't call me little. I'm not that much younger than you. And don't for a second think my uncle is going to pay you a cent. He'll probably thank you for getting rid of me."

Sark set her down so that she was facing him and shook her sharply. "First rule. Don't ever lie to me." He heaved her back up on his shoulder and began marching again.

Sydney groaned as she felt herself do a completely un-Sydney-Bristow-like thing. She fainted dead away.

When she woke up, she knew immediately that a few days had passed. She was sitting in a dark room with her hands tied behind her back to a bedpost. If she had control over her body, she probably could have gotten herself untied within seconds. However, that was not the case.

  
She heard a floorboard outside the door creak before the door opened and light spilled into the room. The harshness of it made her flinch in pain.

"Sorry," she heard Sark apologize. He shut the door behind him and waited for their eyes to adjust to the darkness.

"Why are you doing this?" she heard herself say. 'Oh god, am I crying?' she thought to herself.

"I told you before. I'm only doing this because your uncle forced me to play my hand."

"And I told you, my uncle is not going to pay you any ransom. He doesn't care about me. He only wants the farm my parents left me."

Sark reached into his pocket and pulled out a paper. "Then why did he answer the ransom note I sent him?"

Sydney opened and shut her mouth trying to come up with an explanation but she could find none. "What does he say?"

He opened the letter and began to read it. When he was done, he crumpled it up into a ball and threw it across the room. "Your uncle says he won't pay a cent for your release. He told me to do with you what I will."

"I told you so. Will you let me go now?"

"I can't let you go." Sark looked over at where she was sitting. "A pretty little girl like you would be snatched up within seconds of leaving this house. There are a mighty large number of men out there dying for a little companionship. Mining is not the easiest way of life."

"Are you one of them?" Sydney asked. "Is that the real reason you took me?"

Sark growled in frustration and ripped her hands free of the rope that bound them. He pulled her up next to him and snarled in her face, "If you're trying to entice me, it won't work. I didn't take you so that I could have my way with you."

Sydney looked into his eyes. "But you wouldn't mind it."

He grabbed her and pulled her out the door. She squinted in the sudden light and before she could adjust, she found herself thrown out into the grass. "Leave. You're too much trouble."

The door slammed shut loudly, and she found herself alone with the sound of a million crickets chirping. Knowing that this might be her ticket out of here if she could put some distance between herself and her capturer before he changed his mind, she stood up and started to walk as fast as she could in a random direction.

After a few miles of walking, she found a tree which she rested herself against. She couldn't help but feel slightly disappointed that this young man who had stolen her didn't care to come round her up. A smart person would have realized that he could make money off of her in another way if ransom wouldn't work.

"Hello," she heard a rather slick voice say from her right.

"Who's there?"

A rather stock looking man stepped out into her sight of view. "What's a pretty young thing like you doing out here in the big, bad world? Are you alone, girl?"

She tried to think quick. "No, I'm not. My husband is right around that corner looking for a good place to settle down for the night."

"Lying doesn't suit you, lady." The man grabbed her in his arms and pushed her to the ground. "I bet you I could do whatever I want to you and no one will notice or care."

She could feel him rip the side of her dress open and then shift a little to pull down his pants. Realizing what was about to happen, she felt herself begin to cry. Not loudly. Just a soft little whimper.

Inside herself, Sydney was desperately trying to make herself wake up. She was not in control of this dream, and she wanted out. Between her dream self struggling to get free and her real self struggling to wake up, she didn't hear the noise behind her until a gun shot pierced the air.

The man on top of her slumped down onto her rather forcefully. She pushed him to the side and frantically tried to stand. "Shhh. Don't try to move," she heard Sark's voice whisper as his hand slowly touched her face.

Without another word, he scooped her up and began to carry her back the way they went. By the time they reached the house, she had gotten her wits and her voice back. "How did you know I needed your help?"

"I was following you the whole time. I couldn't let a nice, young lady like you meet her untimely death. What kind of person would that make me?"

"The kind of person who kidnaps nice, young ladies like me."

Sark placed her down on the bed. "I hate to have to tell you this after everything you've just been through. But I really wasn't expecting you to be here long enough to have to sleep. So there's only one bed. My bed. And we're going to have to share it."

She nodded and turned her back to him. A moment later, she felt the bed shift as he lay down with his back to hers. Both of them rested in silence, knowing the other person was as wide awake as they were. Finally, Sydney broke the silence. "Thank you. I don't know what I would have done if that man had had his way with me." She laughed to herself. "You know, I've never even had a man kiss me before."

"I find that hard to believe," she heard him say. She felt him flip over onto his other side.

"Why?"

"Because you're just about the prettiest woman I've ever seen. If I wasn't in this position, I'd probably be trying my darnedest to kiss you."

Sydney felt her heart skip a beat a little. Wondering why she was doing what she was, she turned over to look at him eye to eye. "Don't let a bad situation like this stop you," she whispered. Her body had begun to tremble in anticipation.

Sark's eyes lit up with desire as he leaned in to kiss her…

~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ 

She woke up lazily to see a blond man standing over her. "Toby," she murmured as she pulled him into a kiss.

After a minute, the man broke away. "I only came over here for a little witty banter. If I had know you'd greet me like this, I would have woken you up sooner."

Sydney's eyes flew open as she recognized the familiar British voice that spoke to her. It wasn't the familiar southern drawl she associated with Toby, but it belonged to a man who looked just like him.


	3. The First Broken Heart

Sydney did the first thing that came to mind. She slapped Sark.

Hard.

"Jesus, Bristow! What the hell was that for?" Sark yelled attracting some unwanted attention.

"I don't know," she screamed back. Taking a deep breath, she tried to calm down. "What are you doing here?"

"I think the real question is who is this Toby and why did you think I was him?" Sark sat down in the seat next to her and rubbed his jaw.

Sydney wasn't really in the mood for fighting. These dreams that were haunting her were really taking their toll. She slumped back into her seat and looked over at her companion. "You know if you weren't a completely evil person, I think you and I would get along nicely."

"You know I've always thought that," Sark said. "But the other way around, if one you were a completely evil person."

She found herself laughing even though she tried not to. "Why are you pestering me?" she said as she leaned back and closed her eyes.

"Your little boy toy was picked up by my men about five hours ago."

"Vaughn!" She sat up straight. "What the hell have you done with him, Sark?"

"Nothing, my dear. I just took the disk out of his possession. I let him board his little jet, which I might say pales in comparison to mine."

"Is it always about the size of your jet with you men?"

"Ha ha. Very funny. I just heard that you had a little bit of a wait ahead of you. Couldn't turn down the opportunity to gloat."

"You've gloated. Now go away."

"You don't seem so upset that I got the disk."

"Believe it or not, this mission wasn't that important to the CIA. They sent me on it as a sort of vacation."

"If this is what the CIA considers a vacation, maybe you should have stuck with SD-6. At least they don't expect you to steal things and wear hooker outfits on your vacation." Sark turned to look at Sydney meaningfully. "Unless that's your idea of a vacation. If that's the case, could you please let me know when your next vacation is?"

"I don't have to take this," Sydney said, standing up and grabbing her bag.

Sark ran to catch up with her. "Where are you going, Bristow? Your flight doesn't leave for another three hours."

"I'm not going to spend those three hours sitting there talking to you, that's for sure." She stopped and poked his chest with her finger. "If I didn't know better, I would think you're lonely."

"Maybe I am," Sark said seriously. "It's been an awful long time since I met a woman that could keep up with me like you can, Sydney."

She looked him in the eyes for a moment, trying to read if he was telling the truth, before saying, "Bullshit."

She began walking again and was fairly pleased to hear Sark running to catch up with her again. "Here's the truth. I wanted to make you an offer."

"I've already told you know."

"And I've told you that if you actually took the time to consider it, you might say yes."

"No," she said flat out.

Sark grabbed her arm to stop her from running any further. "The least you can let me do is give you a lift back to the States."  
  
"Aren't you a wanted terrorist? Or was that whole part of your life a crazy dream of mine?"  
  
"Been having some crazy dreams lately?" he asked.

"Get your hands off of me before I make you take them off," she hissed.

"Listen. You and I can be great assets to one another if you would just give it a chance. We have different agendas. We work with different agencies. That doesn't mean that this couldn't be a profitable relationship."

"Um, yeah, it kind of does."

He reached into his pocket and pulled out a disk. "Give me a change, Agent Bristow. You won't regret it."

"Is that the disk I picked up off of Boreo-Garcia?"

"The one and only. It's a lot more important than the CIA would guess. You need this disk if you want to reach your goals. I need you by my side if I'm going to reach mine."

Sydney hesitantly reached out and took the disk from him. She wasn't sure about this, but she knew that something in her was urging her to forget her common sense and move forward. "Let's see just how big this jet is," she said with an eyebrow raised.

~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~

"This is crazy," Sydney thought as the jet took off. She was on a jet with the man she hated most in the world, and she was trusting him enough to actually take her back to Los Angeles.

"Why don't you try to sleep?" Sark suggested. It was obvious she was nervous about the whole situation. If he wanted to get the results he desired, that nervousness would have to go.

"No way," Sydney practically screamed. "There is no way I'm going to sleep with you around."

"I didn't kill you when you were sleeping for hours in the airport terminal," he pointed out.

"That isn't what I meant." She didn't want to have another dream about him while actually being in his presence. It was bad enough that her dreams threw her off enough to kiss him. Who knew what she would end up doing on a jet?

"What did you mean?" he asked.

She just glared at him.

The first half of the flight went by rather quickly. Sark paid no attention to Sydney. Instead, he opted to do some work on his laptop without even looking up from the screen once. It pleased and infuriated her at the same time.

Sydney found herself daydreaming about how she would explain to the CIA her early return. As she pictured herself talking to Vaughn, she felt her consciousness shift to what it would be like to come home to him.

~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ 

__

"Damnit!" she yelled. Her voice echoed down the empty hallway. "I thought daydreams were safe!"

It didn't surprise her to see the two doors again. The black one now had a set of burns on it that looked suspiciously like rope burns. That didn't make much sense to Sydney because how can a door get rope burns. But she couldn't deny what her eyes and mind were trying to tell her.

"What the hell are you trying to do to me?" she screamed to whoever was listening. "This whole dream thing is really screwing with me, and I don't like it. I can't not sleep. I want some answers. I'm not going to go into a door without some answers."

Sydney watched as the blue door flung open with a large gust of wind. "I'm not going in there," she started to scream again.

"Why not?" said a voice behind her.

Sydney turned around and stared in shock at the person addressing her. "Mom?" she murmured.

"I'm not really here, Sydney," her mother said. She walked up to where Sydney was standing and sat down on the ground. "It seems like you can't handle your own subconscious. And I thought I raised you better than that."

"You abandoned me when I was six."

"That's an issue for another day. For now, I want you to go into that door."

"No. Not until you give me some answers, Subconscious!"

Irina grasped her daughter's hands and pulled her down to sit next to her. "What was the one memory you have of me, Sydney?" she asked.

Sydney thought hard. "Just before you left, you and I had a talk. I was playing with my dolls and asked you if I would ever be as happy as you and Dad were."

"You asked me if you would ever find someone like your daddy. Do you remember what I told you?"

"There's a man out there, waiting for me. He's the one that will make me happy for the rest of my life. But I can't just sit around waiting for him to come to me. I have to look for him every day if I really want to find him."

"Your soulmate, Sydney." Irina tapped her daughter lightly on her nose. It was a gesture of affection she had always shown her when they were together as mother and daughter. That was when Sydney was little. Her mother hadn't done that small gesture since. "Did you find him?"  


"I don't know. I'm so confused."

"I know you are. There's a reason you're confused."

"I wish I knew that reason." Sydney threw her head into her hands.

"You're torn between two men. It's as simple as that. You have two men in your life, and you feel like you're destined to be with both." Irina stood up. "That's what these dreams are all about, Sydney."

Sydney looked up into empty air. Her mother the subconscious manifestation had disappeared. She took a deep breath and stood up. "All right. I get what I'm trying to tell myself. I'll go in the damn blue door."

Stepping through the threshold, she didn't even take in her surroundings. Which is why it took her a moment to realize that she hadn't gone back to a distant time or place. Instead, she was in Michael Vaughn's apartment as it was currently, or at least that's what she thought.

"Vaughn?" she called out hesitantly.

He appeared in the doorway with a worried look on his face. "What is this, Sydney?" he asked holding up a computer disk and file folder.

"That's the latest intel that Sark gave me," she replied matter-of-factly.

"I thought I asked you to cut your connections with him. This relationship is not good for you, and you know it."

"He's my partner as much as you are, Vaughn. I can't just cut him off. Besides, he's my friend." It was at this moment that Sydney realized that she was lying in Michael Vaughn's bed. Naked. It took all of her control not to try to cover up.

"He's not your boyfriend, Sydney. He's not your lover." Vaughn threw the items in question down in front of her. "But maybe you want him to be. Is that what's going on?"

As much as she wanted to deny it, she couldn't get her mouth to move. This wasn't a past experience. This hadn't ever happened. Unlike the other dreams, this one was painfully real. But somehow she still had no control over what was happening.

Much to her discomfort, he continued, "You don't think I know what's going on. You thrive on excitement, Sydney. Any fool can see that. I learned that little bit about you the first day we met when you waltzed into CIA facilities with your bleeding red hair and pissed off look. You and me, our relationship was forbidden. And I'll be the first to admit that very aspect is what made it so exciting."

"It wasn't just that, Michael."

  
"Let me finish. The excitement's worn off now that SD-6 and the Alliance are no more. You and I can see each other in public. We can meet for lunch. We can drive to work together. The excitement isn't there anymore, not in the way it used to be. Sark's exciting, isn't he?"

Sydney wanted to deny it, but in her heart, she knew that lying wouldn't help the situation. "Yes."

"Have you slept with him yet?"

Sydney formed her mouth to say no, but that's not what came out. "Yes."

"In St. Petersburg."

"Yes."

"I knew it. I think I've always known it. Sydney, if you don't want to be with me, if you'd rather be with him, then go. I love you enough not to hold you back." He turned his back on her.

"I love you, Michael," she whispered.

"You loved me once, Sydney. I know that. You don't love me anymore. Go and be happy. That's all I ever wanted for you."

The Sydney inside was screaming for herself to stay put in that bed, not to leave Vaughn when he was hurting so badly. But the real Sydney stood up, threw on her clothes which were on the floor, and walked out the door.

~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ 

Sydney awoke and felt the tears in her eyes. She thought she had a good handle on what she was trying to tell herself with these dreams. But why would she make herself break Vaughn's heart? What meaning did that have?

"You're in love with your handler, aren't you?"

Sydney had forgotten for a moment that she had been sleeping on Sark's private plane. That she had agreed to show him a little trust. "What are you talking about?"

"You said 'I love you, Michael' in your sleep. Michael Vaughn is your handler at the CIA, is he not?"

"He is." Something clicked in Sydney's head. What she had been about to start today was a complete mistake. That was what her mind was telling her when she dreamed of breaking Vaughn's heart. "This relationship is not going to go any farther than this jet, Sark. I've thought it through and it's just not going to work for me."

"You haven't thought it through. You've been sleeping, Agent Bristow."

"I can think in my sleep. And I think a mutual partnership with you might be the worst decision I ever made." Sydney felt the familiar bump of the landing gear making contact with solid ground. "I'm leaving."

The plane began to slow as Sark unfastened his seat belt and stood up. He got up and walked over to Sydney. She expected him to hit her or make another forceful offer. What he actually did caught her completely by surprise.

He gently leaned in and unhooked her seat belt. Instead of pulling back to let her stand up, he leaned in. Without asking permission, he touched his lips to hers. It should have been a completely chaste kiss. It would have been a completely chaste kiss. If only Sydney could have kept control of her arms.

As much as she tried to hold them back, her arms snaked around his body and pulled him down onto her. His teeth lightly nibbled on her bottom lip as his hands reached up into her hair. Sydney didn't know why the thought popped into her head, but she found herself thinking that this was the way she had always imagined Vaughn would kiss. Light and teasing with just enough of a hint of passion to keep her wanting more.

Rather abruptly after a few minutes, Sark pulled back and picked her up out of the chair by the waist. He deposited her down by the door just as it was being opened. Smirking, he said, "The offer still stands, Sydney. Give it a little more thought."

She slapped him rather hard and was happy to hear a satisfying crack when she made contact. Walking down the boarding stairs, she called out, "The answer's still no, Sark."

He rubbed his cheek gently and smiled at her disappearing figure. He loved games, especially when they proved to be more difficult than he first imagined.


	4. The Second Broken Heart

Author's note: This story is a double ship, Sydney/Vaughn and Sarkney. If you don't like one ship or the other, you might not want to read this story because it will have both kinds of ship in it… :O)

Sydney did the first thing that came to mind when she reached the airport. She called Vaughn. "I need to talk with you. I almost made the stupidest mistake of my life."

Vaughn quickly agreed to meet her in the warehouse and hung up the phone. He really wanted to ask her what she was doing back in L.A. so early. Her flight wasn't even supposed to have been in the air for an hour. But he saved his questions for when he saw her face to face and knew that she was truly all right.

Sydney rented a car from the airport and drove straight to their meeting place. It didn't surprise her to see that Vaughn's car was already there. He always seemed to be there, waiting for her.

"Vaughn?" she called hesitantly as she entered the warehouse.

"I'm here, Syd," Vaughn answered, standing up from where he had been sitting on a stranded desk. "What happened?"  
  
"Don't get mad."

"Why would I get mad?" He narrowed his eyes at her. "What did you do this time? What rule did you break?"

"I let Sark give me a ride back to a L.A. on his personal jet. I didn't mean to, I swear. It was just he told me about retrieving the disk from you before you got on your plane. And I wanted to get it back. Oh, I wanted to get it back so bad. And I wanted to go home. I was so tired."

Vaughn pulled Sydney into his arms for a hug. "You sound tired. Relax. You don't have to explain your actions to me. Whatever choice you made, I support it. You know what you're doing even if no one else has any idea."

Sydney smiled at him. "Who taught you to be so understanding?"

"My father," he answered seriously.

Sydney shrugged out of his arms. Vaughn's father was still an extremely touchy subject. Her mother had killed him, and there would never be a way around that. "Anyway, Sark propositioned me again. And for some reason, I almost said yes."

"I take back all that stuff I just said. You've lost your mind," he joked.

"I didn't say yes in the end, though."

"What made you change your mind?"

Sydney hesitated for a second, wondering if she should tell Vaughn about the dream she had on the jet, but decided it would be better off if he didn't know. "That's not important. What's important is this disk." Sydney took the disk out of her pocket and held it out to Vaughn.

He took it from her hand and stared at it. "How did you get this away from Sark? There's only so much subtly you can have on a jet."

"I didn't have to steal it from him. He gave it to me in exchange for going along with him on the plane. Which makes me wonder why it was so important I be on that plane with him. Anyway, he said the disk was a lot more important than the CIA realizes."

"I'll have someone check that out tomorrow." Vaughn set the disk down on the desk. Turning, he took a good look at Sydney. "Are you sure you're all right? If I know you as well as I think you do, that face you're making is your put-on-a-brave-face one."

Sydney looked at him in awe. He really did know her as well as she had always believed. Realizing that fact set her over the edge. She burst into tears as she threw herself back into his arms.

Vaughn felt her legs give out, and they ended up in a heap on the floor. He leaned back against the wall still holding onto her tight. "You cry for as long as you want, Sydney. We don't have anywhere to be."

The soft motion of Vaughn's hand playing with her hair soothed Sydney. She managed to reduce her sobs to a few insignificant sniffles. When she had accomplished that, she tried to explain to him what was going on. "I feel like my body's shutting itself down. I sleep at all the wrong times, never in bed at night. I can't for the life of me sleep when it's convenient. My dreams haunt me when I'm asleep and when I'm awake. I feel like my whole world's about to come crashing down, and there's no reason for that."

"Why didn't you tell me this before?"

"I didn't want to burden you. It's not your responsibility to make sure that I don't fall apart."

"It kind of is, Syd."

"That's right. I'm your agent, and you're my handler," she mumbled as she felt herself drifting to sleep again. She had a gut feeling that this was a critical moment and she shouldn't fall asleep, but once again her subconscious took over her body and mind.

As she drifted off, she faintly heard Vaughn say, "Don't you think we're a little more than that?"

~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ 

__

For the first time since these dreams started, there were no changes in the hallway or the doors. Sydney felt herself relax slightly as she realized this. The black door was a good distance down the hall. Knowing that if the pattern held up that was the one she needed to enter, she forced herself to walk down the hall.

She hesitated in front of the door. If this experience was like the previous one, she wasn't sure if she would be able to keep herself sane. Seeing herself hurt Vaughn so deeply had been like having a little piece of her heart die.

The door creaked slightly as she pushed it open. She peeked in and saw that it was another bedroom. "This one is definitely not Vaughn's," she thought as she entered. This room looked as sleek and sophisticated as Vaughn's home looked comfortable and homey. There was a small tingling in her chest but not the normal jolt she had been experiencing.

She looked at her reflection in the mirror in front of her and gasped. Her appearance had definitely changed. It matched the ambiance of the room perfectly, wild and sophisticated. Her hair was chin length and bright red. She hesitantly lifted her hand up to her head and realized that it wasn't a wig. This was her real hair.

Her dress wasn't as disconcerting but none the less different. She was wearing a little black dress that seemed to have been tailor made for her body. It was extremely short and had a neckline that dove all the way down to her navel. She was wearing a necklace that had a very small but extremely exquisite diamond on the end.

In her hands was a small ring box. She was unable to hold back her curiosity and opened the box. Inside was the most beautiful ring she had ever seen. There was a diamond of at least one carat in the middle of a platinum band that looked completely flawless to her. Two sapphires, her favorite gemstone, framed the diamond. Whoever made her this ring knew her inside and out. She couldn't imagine a more perfect ring if she tried.

  
"I see you found it," she heard a voice from the doorway say.

"What does this mean, Julian?" she heard herself ask. In her mind, she was wondering when she had learned that Sark's name was Julian.

"I understand that you asked me not to do this, but I can't help myself. I love you completely and utterly, Sydney. Since the first time I saw you, I think I knew you were the only one for me, the only woman who could really understand me and what I am, the only woman who could keep up with me."

Sydney looked at him with tears in her eyes. She couldn't help noticing that the hand holding the ring box had begun to tremble.

"Don't say anything until I've finished." His eyes pleaded with her, and she couldn't bear to not grant him this one small thing. "You amaze me in a new way every day I'm with you. Every morning I wake up and I can't believe that you're actually lying next to me. Every night I expect you to realize how big a mistake you've made and run out of here without looking back. Sydney, I couldn't take it if you did. Since you agreed to this entire thing, you've become my whole life. And I don't want that to change. What I'm trying so horribly to say is that I love you and I want to spend the rest of my life with you. Sydney Anne Bristow, will you marry me?"

Sydney couldn't believe the words that were coming out of Sark's mouth. She never expected him to show her so much emotion. She never thought he even felt emotion. But deep down in her heart, she knew that every word he said was true. This wasn't some elaborate scheme to get her to do his bidding, to follow his master plan. For the first time since she had known him, she didn't think he had a master plan.

"Julian, you know that I've fallen in love with you. That every moment I spent with you has been unlike anything I've ever known. You're the first person I met who actually let me be who I really was. You helped me learn that the person I am isn't inherently good. I'm not that perfect agent that CIA always thought I was. I have faults. I'm not perfect. I understand that I've changed, but in the end, it was for the better. Everything you did for me was for the better." Sydney paused to wipe the tears out of her eyes. "I've never loved anyone as I've loved you. I love you so much it hurts."

"But you can't marry me." He looked up at her, and she could see the pain and realization in his face. "It's Michael Vaughn, isn't it?"

"He called me today."

"Let me guess. He told you that he was leaving his wife, that he never really loved her. You were the only one he ever truly loved. He knew that the only reason you were apart was because it was forbidden for a CIA handler and his agent to fall in love. He asked you to return to the United States, to return to him."

"You taught me that taking chances is the only way that you can find what you truly desire. I never took the change with Michael, and I think I'll regret that fact for the rest of my life. But now there's a chance to resolve that. I have to take it." Sydney was shocked to hear this words come out of her mouth. When had she become so cold inside? She knew in her heart that this coldness wasn't something she had picked up from Sark. It had always been a part of her. She felt as if her words were knives and she was repeatedly stabbing him without any remorse.

Sark took the ring out of the box and slid it on her finger. "Keep this. I want you to remember me always."

"You're not going to try to stop me?" she asked.

"No one could ever stop you when you decided on something." Sark turned and made his way to the door. When he reached it, he turned around. "Did you ever think, Sydney, that when you're spending the rest of your life with Michael Vaughn that you might regret not finding out where you and I would have ended up?"

She found herself alone, and at that moment, she knew that she had made the wrong choice.

~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ 

Sydney sat up with a start, waking Vaughn up in the process. They had fallen asleep in the same positions, Vaughn leaning against the wall with Sydney's head rested on his lap.

"What's the matter?" Vaughn asked as he wiped the sleep out of his eyes.

"I broke his heart. I was so cold and horrible to him. He had been nothing but nice and kind and considerate the whole time I was with him, and I just broke him in two."

"Who are you talking about?"

"Sark." She really looked at him for the first time since she had woken up. "I'm sorry. It was my dream. It felt so real."

Sydney shrugged off the hand Vaughn had placed on her shoulder. Sighing, she stood up. "I need to go home. I've been going non-stop for too long. It's starting to mess me up. I'll see you in the office tomorrow, Michael."

And she was gone before he could ask her why she had called him Michael instead of Vaughn. Something was terribly wrong.


	5. A New Development

****

Author's note: This story has evolved into a crazy hybrid of Seasons 1,2, and 3. Please just go along with it! To clarify, SD-6 and the Covenant are both around. Irina is still in CIA custody. Sydney's still a double agent, but she also lost the same two years of her life.

Sydney hated the fact that she felt like she was running away from her life. But it was the only thing she could think to do right now. She hadn't ruled out the possibility that she was going crazy. The dreams were creating the worst emotional turmoil she had ever experiences. She was determined to figure out why they were happening and how to stop them.

The mission that SD-6 had sent her on was supposed to be simple. She had to track down an SD-6 agent for extraction from some sticky situation he had gotten into in Quito. The man in question was currently working undercover in the capital of Ecuador as a munitions expert. Sloane informed her that she had an appointment to talk with him. During that appointment, she would just explain who she was and tell him she had a car and plane ready to take him back to Los Angeles.

After a quick phone call, Vaughn had told her that the CIA didn't see the need for a counter mission. She would go in and extract the agent as planned by SD-6.

It would have been a flawless procedure if not for the actual man. As soon as Sydney told him she was with SD-6 and was there to bring him back in to the L.A. facility, he reached under his desk and pulled a gun on her. He was screaming that she didn't know the people she was working for. They were not a black ops division of the CIA. They were the enemy.

Sydney wanted with all her might to tell him that she already knew, but she couldn't risk blowing her cover. For all she knew, this whole operation was an elaborate test to make sure she wasn't a double agent. She tried to disarm the man, and their conflict turned into hand-to-hand combat.

The agent was just as good if not slightly better than Sydney. She tried to end the fight as quickly as she could. In the process of the struggle, the gun went off and the man was shot in the chest.

She watched helplessly as he died on the floor. It was finally clear. This man wasn't her enemy. He had actually been an ally. She could have taken him into the real CIA and he would have gotten a chance at a real life.

That was eight hours earlier. Now she was stuck in some seedy hotel room in Chicago because her connecting flight to Los Angeles got canceled. She was struck with the look of that agent's face as he got shot emblazoned on her mind. It wouldn't go away.

The ringing of her cell phone interrupted her thoughts. Flipping it open she greeted one of her best friend's in the world. "Will? Shouldn't you be in bed? It's four in the morning."

"Nice to hear your voice, too, Syd."

"What's up?"

"Francie's worried about you. She said you were supposed to be home over five hours ago."

"Oh my god. I'm so sorry. I didn't even think to call you guys. I'm holed up in some hotel in Chicago. My connecting flight got canceled. I won't be home until late tomorrow." Sydney expected Will to make some sort of response. But the phone was just dead air when she stopped talking. "Will?" she said tentatively.

"Francie's gone to the bathroom. How did your mission go?"

Sydney smiled to herself. Her life had gotten a little easier since Will found out the truth. It was nice only having to lie to one of her best friends, not both. However, her smile quickly faded as she remembered the mission. "It was pretty horrible."

"Are you crying, Syd?" Will asked. He could hear her voice trembling on the other end.

"I was supposed to go in and save this men. I ended up shooting him, Will. He's dead. This man who was on the same side of me is dead because I didn't do my job properly."

"Aw, Syd. I'm sure it's not your fault. The life you live is a dangerous one. Agents out there are risking their lives every day just like you. This man you killed knew that he might die one day."

"But he didn't know that he would die on the very day he could have been saved by the very person who should have been saving him."

"I'm sure the company's driver loved the fact that you kept making him stop every two miles."

Sydney was only confused for a moment. "Francie walked back into the room, didn't she?"

"Francie's here, Syd. She wants to talk to you."

"Okay. Thank you, Will."

"No problem." Sydney heard the phone rustle as Will handed it over to Francie. She almost giggled as she heard Francie demand that Will leave the room because she had girl talk to do. Will's grumbling in the background was quite funny.

"What's up, Franc?" Syd asked.

"I want to hear about your business trip. Was that Michael guy with you?"

Sydney decided to play dumb. "What Michael guy?"

"He was with you," Francie shrieked.

"No. He didn't come on this trip. Sorry to disappoint you."

"But he's still in the picture, right? He didn't get fired or anything absurd like that?"

"No, he's still working with the bank. But I've told you before Francie I don't think he wants to date me."

"Come on now. Who wouldn't want to date you, Syd? You're one of the most devoted workers that stupid bank has. You're super intelligent. And hello! You're drop dead gorgeous. The kind of gorgeous that little girls pray to be."

"Anyway, it's not the right time for me."

"Listen to me, Sydney. You can't spend all your time just waiting for a second chance to come up to you. You have to go out there and find it. You're always coming up with these reasons why men wouldn't want you in their lives. It's ridiculous."

"Thanks for the pep talk, Coach." Sydney sighed. "Listen. I need to go to bed. I've had a hard day, I have a flight to catch in the morning, and you need to get up and run that beautiful restaurant."

"Okay. Keep what I said in mind, though. Don't just shrug it off."

"I promise," Sydney said as she closed the phone. She set it on the dresser and curled up onto the bed. If only Francie knew how out of the question a relationship with Vaughn would be. Plus, she didn't even know where her mind was.

She knew Francie thought her comment about it being the wrong thing had to do with Danny, but she had actually reached the end of that grieving cycle. Danny would be in her mind and heart for years and years to come. But she didn't hurt as much as she once did. She could feel herself urging her to move on with her life.

The tears had begun to run down her face back when she was talking to Will, and they hadn't stopped yet. She grabbed a tissue off the nightstand and tried to dab at her eyes. It seemed like she was always crying about one thing or another lately, ever since her mind had left her body.

She closed her eyes and willed herself to fall asleep. But it wasn't happening. Her body didn't want to sleep. She hadn't slept in thirty-eight hours, but that didn't seem to matter.

After an hour of staring at the ceiling, her focus was interrupted by a knock on the door. "Probably the damn maid," she muttered as she went to open the door.

When she saw who it was, her mouth dropped open in shock. "Vaughn? What are you doing here?"

Vaughn pushed his way past her into the hotel room and shut the door behind him. "The CIA got your call that you were stuck in Chicago. Kendall told me to take tomorrow off since you were just stuck in a hotel room."

"So you tracked me down and flew out here? That doesn't make sense."

"From the way Kendall described your phone call, I could tell you were upset about something. And being stuck in a big city with no one to talk to is not the way to cure that. Besides, I wanted to come and make sure you were okay myself. You know I worry about you when you're out on missions."

"I know."

"So tell me what happened."

Sydney sat down on the bed and put her head into her hands. "I killed the agent I went in there to save. He was just like me, Vaughn. He knew that SD-6 wasn't what they said they were. He thought I was going to take him back home to get killed. I couldn't tell him that I believed him and knew the truth. It would have compromised my position. So I kept my mouth shut. We struggled. His gun went off, and he got shot."

"I'm sorry, Syd." Vaughn took a seat next to her on the bed. "It must have been horrible."

"It was strange. I kept thinking of Danny and how he died. There's no real connection but the image of Danny kept coming up in my mind."

"That's a natural thing. Danny was the man you loved. It takes a while to move on past that, especially with the circumstances surrounding his death."

Sydney sighed. "It's just these memories keep coming up. And then there are my dreams. They're so vivid that I keep thinking of them as memories. I thought that this mission, my work, would distract me. But it's not good enough. Nothing seems to be good enough."

Vaughn didn't know what to do as she started crying again. He slid his arm around her and pulled her close so that her head rested on his shoulder. "Well, I'm here now. So you don't have to be strong. You can let it all out."

And she did just that. When Sydney's sobs had died down, Vaughn laid her down onto the bed. He stood up and took off his jacket before sliding next to her. She reached out and wrapped his arms around her waist. In any other situation, she might have found this odd, but for some reason, it felt right and okay in her current predicament.

"I talked to Francie earlier," she said randomly. "She told me that I couldn't sit around and wait for a second chance. That if I want to move on, I need to go out there and find someone. She said I had to stop making excuses for myself."

"What prompted this lecture?" Vaughn asked.

Sydney could hear the smile in his voice. He always loved hearing about the normal parts of her life. It made sense since he didn't really have much of a normal life out of the CIA. When he hung out with friends, it was usually people who worked with him at the CIA. When he went on vacation, he usually ended up doing some random task for the CIA. So, it seemed right to hear him so interested in the normal parts of her completely abnormal life.

Realizing that she wanted to see his smile, his face, when she answered his question, she turned toward him. "She asked me about a guy from work."

"A guy from work?"

"I foolishly told her I had a crush on this man I worked with. And now she asks me about him every time I go on a business trip." Sydney smiled at him. "I promised her that I would give this guy a chance."

"I'll have to let Weiss know that. He'll be excited to know that you finally come around. He's been waiting for a year and a half now."

"Very funny," she said as she smacked him lightly on the chest. She sobered up rapidly and looked him dead straight in the eyes with a serious look on her face. "I heard what you said that day in the warehouse when I fell asleep on you. You asked me if I thought our relationship was more than just an agent and a handler. I wanted to let you know that yeah, I think it is."

Vaughn looked in to her eyes for a moment before realizing that she was giving him a go ahead. This was the moment he had been waiting for since the first day she stepped into the CIA offices. Smiling, he leaned in and kissed her lightly. When she did shrug away but wrapped her arms around him, he kissed her a little less tentatively.

He almost sighed when he realized her lips were exactly as he imagined. Soft, yet powerful with a hint of sweetness to them. He had been dreaming about kissing those lips for so long.

"We shouldn't be doing this," Sydney whispered between kisses.

Vaughn sighed and pulled away a little. "I know that. You know that. I don't think it's enough to stop us, though. You've had a long day. Why don't you try to get some sleep? We can sort this out in the morning."

Sydney nodded, realizing that she was in fact tired. She turned over again and snuggled in close to Vaughn's body. This whole day had put her mind into such a daze that she didn't even think to be scared of what her dreams might tell her this time.

~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ 

__

There was no hallway this time. Sydney figured that her mind was starting to get tired of letting her have a choice or given her any insights. It was all business this time.

She was tied to a chair, and there was a large Asian man interrogating her. It suddenly came to her that this wasn't a fantasy or vision of what the future might be. This had happened before. If she remembered she was in a prison in Beijing. A guard had caught her with a right hook to the head when she wasn't looking.

Recalling how the scene played out, she realized that she was about to work the ropes binding her arms free. Then she was going to promptly take out every person in the room one by one. She remembered thinking this was the day she proved she could really handle herself without the help of anyone else. Afterwards, she would run back to the warehouse in Los Angeles to tell Vaughn about how she came to a realization. A realization that she could make it through this ordeal without quitting or being consumed.

Sydney was surprised to realize that she had control of her body. In her memory, she knew that the pain was a little too great for her to look around so freely. But here she was, doing just that.

What she saw shocked her. In the back of the room, there was a man issuing orders to her torturer. She recognized him as one of the higher ups in the Alliance. However, the shocking part was who was standing next to this man. Vaughn.

  
"This can't be right," she thought to herself. "Number one, Vaughn was visiting his mother in France while I was on this mission. Number two, there's no way he would stand by and watch me get tortured."

She shook her head, willing the scene to be altered or disappear entirely. It wouldn't. She could hear Vaughn's voice over the sound of her own screams at being punched and kicked.

"You promise there's no way she'll be able to identify that I was here. I don't want to blow my cover with the CIA."

"Agent Vaughn, there is no way Miss Bristow will connect you with what happened today," the Alliance man said.

"Good. She is just starting to trust me. If my mission is going to be a success, I can't afford to lose that trust."

Sydney stared in awe at the solemn face of her handler as the scene began to fade out.

~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ 

Sydney awoke with a start. Vaughn was still lying beside her, sound asleep. She couldn't look at him. The events in her dream were too fresh in her mind. Like every other time she had woken up, it was so hard to separate fantasy from reality.

She slid out of the bed, being careful not to jar it so much that Vaughn realized she was leaving. With the complimentary pencil and pad sitting on the night table, she wrote him a quick note that her mind was racing with too many thoughts for her to sleep. She promised she'd be back before the sun rose.

Her jacket was sitting on the armchair next to the table where she left the note. Taking a deep breath to calm her nerves, she grabbed it and headed out the door.

Downtown Chicago was very desolate in the early hours just before the morning rush started, Sydney realized. If she hadn't been so occupied with trying to sort out her dreams, she might have been a little awestruck by the beauty of it. She found a deserted park bench in the middle of the maze of skyscrapers and streets and chose to sit down.

A lot of time must have passed without her realizing it because the next thing she knew she was surrounded by rush hour traffic and Vaughn was screaming her name and running towards her.

"Sydney! What the hell made you leave that hotel room?" he demanded as he leaned down to catch his breath.

"I told you in the note. I needed to think. I needed to be by myself for a little while."

"Don't go running off like that. I was afraid someone had gotten to you." Seeing that Sydney looked like she was about to cry, his face softened. "I didn't mean to yell at you. I was just worried. You mean a lot to the CIA… and to me," he added hesitantly.

She smiled at him and held out her hand for him to help her up. "Thank you."

They began walking hand in hand along the street. Vaughn held out his hand to hail down a cab. When a cab had been motioned over and they were comfortably seated inside, he asked, "So how did all your thinking go?"

"I think I came up with a lead. There's someone I need to see who may have some of the answers I'm looking for."

Vaughn looked at Sydney for a moment. She was sounded almost cryptic. He had only known her for about eighteen months, but he had never heard her sound this distant and emotionless. The impact of her double agent missions and the dreams that were haunting her night and day were becoming apparent.


	6. A Mother's Help

Sydney sat in a rather uncomfortable black chair waiting for the man in front of her to verify her clearance. On the plane, this had seemed like a good option and really the only course of action she had. By the time she had gotten off the plane, she realized that this might be a little more complicated than she thought.

Sighing, she thought back to the flight as she watched the agent in front of her getting nowhere on the phone. She had warned-- no, pleaded-- with Vaughn to not let her fall asleep. His cell phone rang halfway through the flight with an urgent call from Kendall that he had to take.

"Which explains why he's not here with me for this," she said. The agent on the phone was beginning to get impatient and yell with whomever was on the other end.

She had fallen asleep within minutes of Vaughn leaving her side. And her dream was just as unsettling as she would have guessed."

~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~

__

"I know where I am," Sydney said as she stared at her surroundings. "This was a mission I was on a few months ago to Queenstown, New Zealand."

Usually, when she reported on her missions, no one could really understand how things had worked out the way they did. S he always seemed to get away in some feat of amazing luck. This was one of the few missions that not even she was sure how she had gotten out of trouble.

SD-6 had sent her on a mission to retrieve a Rambaldi artifact. Her CIA counter-mission was rather simple. Steal the artifact and give it to them while telling SD-6 that the mission was a failure. Sydney had done exactly that, but no one had counted on the silent alarm. When she stole the Rambaldi box, the alarm alerted the guards who came rushing to eliminate her. She remembered fighting for her life, and then there was just darkness. 

She woke up in a gutter a few miles away with the box safely in her bag. How she got there, she never really figured out.

Looking around, she began to walk through the hallway in search of an exit. Halfway down the hall, she tripped over a lump and was floored to realize that the lump was here.

"I must be having an out of body experience," she whispered as she stared at her unconscious self. A noise at the end of the corridor made her jump back.

A man in a ski mask came rushing towards her and knelt down in front of the unconscious Sydney. He checked her pulse and then lifted her up into his arms.

She followed the man carrying her down the hallway and out a door into the cold New Zealand air. The man set her down on the ground and checked the wound that was on her head. Swearing lightly, he whipped off his mask.

Sydney gasped when she realized that it was Sark who had taken her out of the building. She didn't recall him being there that night.

"What am I going to do with you, Sydney? I can't be protecting you all the time," he said. "Not if I'm going to successfully keep up this ruse of being intrigued yet hating you." He pulled out his cell phone, and she heard him request a cover-up for the actions he was planning on taken.

Sydney frowned. That explained why she thought Sark wasn't in New Zealand that night. He must have gotten fake traveling records to make it seem like he was on another continent or something to that effect. "When did I start taking my dreams for the truth?" she asked herself.

Sark flipped his phone shut and walked back over to the unconscious Sydney. Seeing her begin to stir, he put his mask back on.

"Where am I?" she heard herself ask groggily.

"I'm going to get you out of here," Sark replied. He was talking in a rather convincing native New Zealander accent.

Sydney saw Sark help her to her feet and lead her to an open spot near a few trees. There was a motorcycle stashed there which Sark promptly helped her onto. They took off into the distance.

"This is unbelievable," Sydney muttered. She blinked her eyes and found she was in another spot. This one looked familiar. It was where she had woken up and where the CIA had tracked her to.

She saw Sark lay her down on the ground. Then, he reached into his pocket and pulled out a hypodermic needle. "I'm sorry for this," he apologized in his New Zealand accent. "But I can't chance you remembering any of this."

Before she could reply, he had stuck the needle into her arm

~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~

And that's when Sydney had woken up. Vaughn was shaking her and apologizing for letting her drift off. She lied to him and told him that it was all right and she hadn't had an upsetting dream.

In reality, she was still confused as to why she would have add such a fictional twist to something that had actually occurred to her. There was no way that Sark would have voluntarily helped her unless it was profitable for him. She knew for a fact that if what she had dreamed were the truth, there would have been no personal profit. He would have done it just to keep her safe.

Her thoughts were interrupted by the agent slamming down the phone and instructing her that she could go ahead into the hallway.

Sydney couldn't believe she was doing this. The metal door of bars clicked shut behind her as she made her way down the hallway. Sighing, she took in empty cell after empty cell. It looks like the CIA was holding true to their promise of complete isolation. She took a deep breath and stopped in front of the one occupied cell.

"Hello. I've been expecting you."

She looked at her mother's cool, almost aloof demeanor. It was times like these that she really wished her mother weren't so much of a spy. "As much as it pains me to admit this, I need you to go over something that happened when I was little."

"I thought you made it clear that we weren't too discuss anything that had to do with the life I led as Laura Bristow."

"I guess I wasn't clear enough then. You don't have the right to mention anything that happened when you were posing as my mother. You're not the woman I know as Laura Bristow. Therefore, you have no right to talk to me about her. However, if I need information, you're going to give it to me, and you're going to give it freely without contestation."

"Is this about the dreams you've been having?"

"How the hell do you know about that?"

"Mothers know when something is bothering their children."

"That's bullshit. You and I have no real connection. If we did, you wouldn't have faked your death and left me to be raised by my father, a man incapable of caring for and raising anything. So, how did you find out? How did you know about my dreams?"

"The same way I know that you aren't going to walk out of here no matter how many times you threaten to. You want answers, just like everyone else who's ever come to see me. I might have the ones you're looking for. I might not. Just relax a little, and we will see." Irina looked meaningfully at her daughter. "Your Agent Vaughn was talking about you to his friend earlier today. I believe his name is Eric Weiss. He was concerned for you. He cares for you."

"New rule. You're not allowed to discuss Agent Vaughn's feelings for me."

Her mother sighed and took a seat on the cot in the cell. "So, how can I help you?"

Sydney's eyes widened in surprise. "I want to know why I'm having these dreams. And I want to know up front if you have anything to do with them."

"I have nothing to do with them. But I still don't have any idea how I can be of help to you."

"Start with a conversation you had with me right before you left. The one about me having a soul mate somewhere out there."

Irina took a deep breath. "There's a lot that I'm about to say that you won't believe or accept. But you need to take my words for what they are. Like I said before, they might not give you the answers you want, but they'll give you a base for you to make your own conclusions off of. Hopefully, that will be enough to satisfy you."

Thinking about it, Sydney couldn't believe the situation she had put herself in. If someone had told her yesterday she would be standing in front of her mother's CIA cell after having spent the day before in downtime Chicago with her handler, she would have called them crazy.

"Are you familiar with the term soul mate? And what exactly is means?" Irina asked as she smiled. "I think I mentioned this before, didn't I?"

Sydney took a seat on a bench facing the glass wall of Irina's cell and crossed her arms. "Honestly, I always thought it was a little more bullshit than it was reality. The idea that there's one person out there for you and that's it. Sorry if that breaks your heart."

"That's a very narrow definition of soul mate. A soul mate is, indeed, the one person out there that fits with you in this lifetime."

"Don't sound so smug," Sydney interrupted. "It's very annoying, that I-know-something-better-than-you-do tone."

Irina looked at her daughter for a moment and then continued. "The part that everyone forgets is that a soul mate isn't limited to just your current lifetime. It's a common belief when you eventually finally find your soul mate, you spend lifetime after lifetime with them. Death is too small a concept in comparison with a soul mate. Nothing is stronger than finding the one you're meant to be with."

Sydney moved to get up. "I don't think I can do this."

  
"Don't go. You're uncomfortable with the idea that soul mates meet each other over and over again through each of their lifetimes. Why is that?"

"It's a little far-fetched, don't you think?"

"Don't hide behind your discomfort. You always do that."

"I do not. And don't pretend like you know me."

"You're not upset by how absurd it is. You're upset because you actually think what I'm saying might be true, and it might pertain to you. Not everyone has a soul mate. It's a very unique, special thing. Which is why it transcends death." Irina paused to take another look at her daughter. "You look good. Tired, but good."

Sydney gave up on trying to sound cold and distant with her mother. She was too exhausted to pretend like this whole conversation didn't have that large of a meaning for her. "These dreams are pretty much keeping me up all day and night. When I finally do get to sleep, the sleep is the worst I've ever gotten. It's not rejuvenating at all. In fact, I think I wake up more tired than when I began."

Irina walked up to the glass wall and rested her hand on it. "I know it's a lot to ask of you, but can you tell me a little more about your dreams?"

"Well, for starters, you seem to be the manifestation of my subconscious. I don't even want to begin analyzing that one. My dreams started out as alternating between Vaughn--"

"Michael Vaughn? Your handler?" Irina interrupted.

"Yes, my handler. I was having dreams from another time period, it seemed like."

"Seems to me that supports the soul mates for more than one lifetime part of the theory. What was the other dream you were alternating with those of your forbidden love affair?"

Sydney wasn't quite sure she wanted to tell her mother this part of the story, but she figured she had no choice. "Sark."

"You were having dreams about my former employee?"

"Yes," she hesitantly admitted. "I don't what that means. I hate Sark like I've never hated any man or woman before. He disgusts me."

"And yet, you are having dreams about him." She paused. "Can I ask what's so upsetting about these dreams?"

"It's not those dreams that are bothering me. They were annoying, sure, because I couldn't understand where they were coming from. But then a different kind of dream started. I had a dream that I was blissfully happy with Vaughn, but I was in a mutual partnership with Sark."

"This sounds like a dream," Irina said with a laugh.

Sydney smiled. Surprisingly, she was beginning to loosen up around her mother. "It gets worse. Vaughn figured out that I was still in a partnership with Sark even after he asked me to stop. And I admitted that I was sleeping with him. It was a complete bizarre world. It was my happiest dream gone completely wrong."

"I can see how that would upset you." Irina turned away from the glass cell wall and took a seat on the CIA-issue cot.

"And then I had another dream in which I had run away from my life in the United States with the CIA. I had gone on a whirlwind trip with Sark, and he had fallen in love with me."

"He always said to me that if he ever met my daughter, he would snatch her up for himself."

"He proposed to me in my dream. But I told him that Vaughn had left his wife and wanted to see if the relationship we had always wished for through the years might actually work. I left Sark, knowing that I was making the wrong decision." Sydney looked at her mother. "What the hell does all the mean?"

"Well, you seem to have a little predicament. It seems to me that you just might have two soul mates," Irina said simply.

"That statement contradicts itself. If a soul mate is the one person you're meant to spend lifetime after lifetime with, how can I have two soul mates?"

Irina stood up and smiled at her. "I wish there was more I could tell you, but that's all. You need to figure out the rest for your own. It's always better when you figure out things on your own."

"I don't know if I can figure this one out on my own," Sydney admitted as she stood up.

Irina smiled at her daughter. "Then my only advice to you is to give both men a shot. Don't let your mind close your eyes and ears to what they're trying to tell you. They should help you figure things out even without trying."

Sydney took one last look at her mother and then began to make her way out of the prison block. "My mother is insane," she whispered. "Imagine having two soul mates. That makes no sense. No sense at all."

She looked around the main floor and couldn't see one familiar face. Vaughn had promised her that he would be done with his numerous meetings by one o'clock so they could meet for lunch. They hadn't seen each other since they parted presences from their return trip from Chicago.

Looking down at her watch, she realized that it was already ten minutes past one. "What am I still doing here?" she muttered as she grabbed her purse.

She drove herself as fast as legally possible to the small little restaurant that Vaughn had suggested. He promised her that there was a convenient parking garage next to the restaurant that would cover up their meeting. Sydney understood the risks they were both taking, but at this point, she had really stopped caring. It was time she started doing things for her own sake for a change.

As she stepped out of her parked car, she noticed a black car out of the corner of her eye. It seemed highly out of place. Her spy senses kicked in a second too late, though.

A man grabbed her from behind and put his hand over her mouth so she couldn't scream. She bit down hard on his hand, but he refused to pull it away. Kicking and wiggling weren't helping matters either. In fact, she guessed that her fighting might have been the reason the man shoved her head into the wall forcefully.

Bells went off, and she felt herself dip in and out of consciousness a few times. The man picked her up off the ground with ease and brought her over to the car. The back driver's side door opened, and Sydney found herself being shoved into the car.

She landed hard on the floor which kept her dazed enough that she couldn't recover before the doors clicked locked. A hand to her head came back stained red with blood. Sitting up, she noticed that she wasn't alone.  
  
"Hello, Agent Bristow," Sark said from his comfortable position opposite her. "Consider yourself kidnapped."


	7. A Few Answers

Sark stared at her confused look. "Sydney? Are you bleeding?"

Sydney was so thrown off that she didn't even wonder when he had started referring to her by her first name and not that cocky, smug 'Agent Bristow'.

"I think so," she whispered, still staring at him with wide eyes. She saw a look of anger flash on Sark's face quickly before he could conceal it. "Why do you care?"

"Because I instructed that man not to harm a hair on your head."

"Looks like he didn't really understand your command." Sark grabbed Sydney's arm and yanked her over to sit down next to him as gently as possible. "What the hell are you doing?" she demanded.

"Don't fight me," Sark said as he pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket. He opened a bottle of water that was sitting in one of the cup holders and wet the cloth. "I need to see how bad this wound is."

"Again, why do you care?" she asked.

Sark dabbed the wound lightly. He didn't say a word for five minutes until he was done tending to her wound. Then, he let out a sigh. "I'm tired of playing this little game, Sydney. I'm tired of pretending like the last two years didn't happen."

"What do you mean the last two years?"

Sark rolled his eyes. "Don't try to pretend like you don't remember. I know that you do."

"I have never been more truthful than when I say that I have no idea what you are talking about. I can't remember a thing from the last two years."

"You told me that if our plan was to work, you were going to have to set up this elaborate ruse, but this is ridiculous. If you can't admit the truth to me, then who can you trust in?"

"I don't know what to tell you," Sydney practically screamed. "I don't remember."

Sark stared at her as she began to cry in frustration. "Oh, shit. You really don't. I'm sorry, Syd."

She sat with her face in her hands for a few moments. Eventually she looked up when she heard Sark whisper "Why are you so prone to amnesia, Syd?" He reached out and grabbed her hand in support.

"Don't touch me, you pig," she hissed. "And when did I ever tell you that you could call me Syd?" She was surprised to see a hurt look appear on his face.

He drew his hand back slowly and reached into his pocket. Pulling out a small box, he said, "I was going to ask you if you wanted this back today, but I guess you won't remember ever wearing it."

She lifted the top of the ring-size box open and gasped. "This is the ring you gave me in my dream," she whispered. The ring had a diamond and two sapphires on a platinum band. It was identical to the one she imagined.

"That's the ring I gave you one year ago in Berlin," he supplied.

Sydney realized the problem with his statement almost immediately. "How could you have given this to me a year ago? You were in federal custody for the whole two years I was missing."

"Actually, it wasn't me. Dr. Enzo Markovic came to me with his doubling technology before his own reconstructive surgery. He offered me a great opportunity, and I took it. I had one of my most loyal employees go through the process. He took on my face and learned to take on my persona. When you captured me in Stockholm, that wasn't really me."

"You expect me to believe that we picked up one of your men who had been cosmetically enhanced to look like you?"

"You are a double agent for the CIA who actually was a triple agent once. But you don't really remember that, so we'll skip that part. Your mother's in prison, and your father is the most ruthless man I've ever met. You put on a new wig and dress for every day of the week, pretending to be someone you're not. All this, while trying to keep up the premise of a normal life. And you don't believe that I had someone take on my face?"

"You make a good point. So, that wasn't you in CIA custody when I returned from my missing two years?"

"No, that wasn't me."

"You know, I kind of believe that. You laughed in my face when I talked to you then. In all the time I've known you, you've always smirked knowingly. You've never outright laughed at me before. I didn't even know you were capable of a full-on laugh. So where were you during the two years in question?"

"Right by your side."

"You mean to tell me that I spent my missing two years with you. I really think if you want to get me to believe you, you need to come up with better lies than that."

"It was your choice mostly to be by my side. You suffered a nasty blow to the head on your last mission before you disappear and had amnesia. I found you and decided I could use this to my advantage."

"That's the first thing you've said to me that I haven't been surprised to hear."

Sark gave her a look which shut her up quickly. "You got your memory back within weeks, but for some reason you didn't want to return to the CIA."

"You're making this up again."

"Sydney, you're holding an extremely expensive engagement right that I gave you. I don't think I'd spend that much money on a lie."

She looked down at the ring. He did have a point. "If I was with you for the two years, what were we doing?"

"Believe it or not, nothing that has to do with the spy world. I had to lie low because the whole world thought I was in CIA custody."

"And why was I lying low?" she asked. She still wasn't sure if she believed all this.

"You just wanted a break. It's as simple as that. I offered you the opportunity and you took it. After a while, your reasons changed."

"May I ask to what?"

"You're not going to believe me."

"Try me."

"After a few months, your reason for staying wasn't because you wanted a break from the CIA. It became the simple fact that you didn't want to leave me. I think you said for the first time in your life you were exactly where you wanted to be."

"You're right. I don't believe that." She decided to steer the subject back on course. "So we didn't go on any covert missions together? We didn't become partners or anything weird like that?"

"Not business partners, no." Sydney felt the need to slap him as she realized what he was implying. Reading her mind, Sark continued, "Before you slap me, remember I mentioned that ring was an engagement ring. One you very willingly accepted."

"I doubt that."

Sark bit his lip in frustration. He glared at Sydney. "Sometimes I wish I had let you die all of those times I saved your ass."

"You saved my ass numerous times, did you? This is news to me."

"Numerous times in the last few months since you've returned to your life with the CIA. You made me promise you that I would when you left."

"Why did I leave?"

"Because there were still questions about your mother that you needed answered. And I didn't have the right answers. So, you chose to go back. You told me to pretend, at least for a little while, that the past two years didn't happen. The plan should have gone well, except the Covenant interfered. They got the man they thought was me out of the CIA prison cell. I can only assume they were also behind your current bout with amnesia, too."

"Let's stay on the topic of you first. Then, I'll try to sort out my missing two years. There are currently two of you running around?"

"No. I had my double killed. It was for the best. He would have blown both of our covers, and we couldn't let him do that under any condition."

"I wish you wouldn't keep making me sound so despicable and evil. I'm not you."

"No, you're not."

Sydney glared at him. The glare disappeared when she realized something very important. "That mission I went on in Queenstown. Did you save me?"

"Yeah. I got you out of the building and drove you a few miles away from the facility. But you shouldn't remember that. I gave you a drug to erase those memories."

"I do remember, though." Sydney's mind was thrown into complete disarray. Her last dream was real. That made her begin to wonder what other dreams she had had were real, too. Pushing that thought to the back of her head, she asked the other question she had. "If you thought that I was faking my two years amnesia, why did you offer a partnership to me a few weeks ago?"

"I was testing to see if it was true. I needed to know if you really had forgotten or if it was all part of the plan you had. Plus, if you were faking it, I had just managed to secure some alone time with you where we could drop the facades we were wearing. When you slapped me that second time, I knew that you really hadn't remembered our time together."

They sat in silence, neither knowing what to say next. Finally, Sark reached into his pocket and drew out a business card. He flipped it over to the back, wrote something down, and handed it to Sydney.

"Steven Walker?" she asked reading the name on the business card.

"It was left over from the alias I used on my last mission. On the back is an address. When you get some vacation time from the CIA, go there. It might help you remember your missing two years." Sark reached over and pressed a button. The locks popped open loudly.

"You're actually letting me go?"

"My intention was never to kidnap you." He reached over her and pulled on the door handle. "I'll be seeing you soon."

Not knowing what to say to him, she simply got out of the car and shut the door, but not before sneaking one last look at him. He really did look slightly hurt and rather fazed by the whole conversation. She wanted to believe he was telling her the truth.

Sighing, she pocketed the business card and began to make her way to the restaurant she had promised to meet Vaughn at.

When she made it to the restaurant, she was happy to see that he was still waiting for her at a table outside on the sidewalk. He stood up to greet her as their eyes met.

"I'm sorry I'm late," she apologized.

"Where were you?"

Deciding it was easier if Vaughn didn't know the truth, she lied. "Work held me up. You know how it can get."

"How was your talk with your mother?"

"It helped a little. Though I have to admit, the whole time I was there I was wondering if I could trust my mother enough to believe her."

"What did she tell you?"

Sydney paled. She hadn't thought of what to say to Vaughn. He knew about the dreams in general, but she had never told him that they were about him and Sark. The idea that she was dreaming about him would probably please him. However, she knew for a fact that he would be upset by her dreams about Sark.

"You don't have to tell me if you don't want to, Syd," he said, noticing her pause and horror-filled look.

"Thank you," she said, letting out the breath she hadn't realized she had been holding. "It's just… I'm still trying to sort out what's happening to me. It would be a lot less complicated if I didn't have to reason it out with other people."

"You don't have to explain. Just know that I'm here if you do decide you need a sounding board."

She smiled and reached for his hand across the table. "You were always there. So, what are we going to do about this? We can't build a relationship on sneaking off to eat lunch together."

"I don't know. You and I both know that Kendall would not approve of this. And SD-6 would probably kill either you or I if they found out that their Agent Bristow was dating a CIA employee."  


"So, I guess we need to keep this under wraps for a while."

"Until we reach our goal of taking down SD-6 and the Alliance, yeah, it looks that way." Vaughn smiled at her. "But if two spies can't handle the challenge, I don't know who can."

It was at that moment that Sydney realized that her life was probably as perfect as she could ever expect it to be. "Then why do I have an uneasy feeling in my stomach?" she wondered to herself. Grinning, she pushed that thought out of her mind and turned her attention back to the man she was slowly and yet quickly falling for.

"You seem distracted, Syd," he said. "Maybe we should try this again later."

"I want to say no, but it might be better if we did. I just have to much going on my mind."

Vaughn leaned over and kissed her quickly on the lips. "I will see you later, won't I?"

"Of course," she replied as she stood up from the table. Constantly scanning all around her, she made her way out of the restaurant and back to her car. She slid into the driver's seat and sat in silence. After a moment, she took out the business card Sark had handed her and turned it over a few times. She put it back into her pocket, started the ignition, and began to drive back to her apartment.

The drive was uneventful, which was a surprise to Sydney considering the last week or so had been a whirlwind of events. When she unlocked her apartment door and stepped inside, the first thing she did was shrug off her coat and throw it on the kitchen counter. The shower was calling her name.

~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ 

She didn't think she had ever taken a shower that long in her life. For the first half hour, she just stood underneath the spray from the showerhead, simply glad to feel the pressure on her skin. She threw a towel around herself and walked out into the kitchen for a bowl of ice cream. The heat and steam from the shower had made her crave something cold.

A quick three or four scoops later, she found herself searching everywhere for a clean spoon. She finally found one in the drawer with all the random kitchen utensils she had no idea what to do with. As she closed the drawer, her eyes shifted upward onto the counter and focused on the small business card. It must have slid out of her jacket pocket when she threw it on the counter.

Sighing, she grabbed the card and took her bowl of ice cream into her bedroom. She set the card onto the bed and curled up with her bowl of ice cream. Her eyes kept shifting back to the tiny white rectangle.

She pushed the bowl aside and picked up the card. "59 Stanler Ave," she said to herself. "That doesn't sound familiar at all."

The card was flung onto her nightstand. Sydney felt that staring at it probably wasn't going to make her decision any less easy. She really wanted to find out what was at this address, but in the back of her head, there was a voice screaming not to trust Sark. That this was probably all a setup, and if she did go there, he would probably kidnap her and take away two more years of her life.

She laid back on the bed and stared at the ceiling for a while. Happily, she noted that she didn't feel tired at all. It was nice, knowing for once that a weird, almost prophetic dream wasn't on its way.

An eerie feeling started to creep up her spine. She sat up and looked over at the night table. "Does it make me crazy if I think a card is watching me?" she asked herself out loud. "Oh, screw it."

She leaned over and grabbed the cordless phone off her night table. The buttons were pressed without a second thought. She had dialed this number a million times.

"Hello. This is Mountaineer. Could you tell the Director that I need some time off?"


	8. The Most Beautiful Girl In the World

Sydney was sitting on her couch working away on a SD-6 assignment on her laptop when she heard a soft knock on her back door. "That's weird," she muttered. "No one ever comes to the back door." She pushed her laptop aside and went to answer the knocking that had started up again.

"Vaughn! What are you doing here?" she asked with a laugh. "You know that you're not allowed to be seen here with me."

"I checked. I wasn't followed, and your house is swept for bugs and plants weekly." He let out a big breath of air and smiled. "So there is where you live."

"This is where I live. What are you doing here?"  


"You were so upset at lunch the other day that I wanted to come and make sure you were all right."

"You could have done that at any point when we were at work."

He sent her a devilish grin. "But then I wouldn't get to see your house. If you want me to go, I will."  


"No way," she said as she grabbed his collar and pulled him in for a rather forceful kiss. "I'm glad you're here."

"Good." He brought his arm out from behind his back, and she saw that he was holding a bouquet of daisies. "I hope these cheer you up."

She gasped and grabbed them out of his hand. "They're so great."

"Beautiful just like you."

"That was such a line," she said with a laugh. "But it worked. Thank you."

Sydney went to the kitchen to put her new flowers in water. He watched her every move drinking in the sight of her. "I can never get enough of you," he said.

"You're just on fire with these compliments tonight. It's good to be appreciated."

He walked up behind her and slid his arms around her stomach. "Dance with me."

"There's no music."

"There doesn't need to be."

He spun her around to face him and grasped her hands in his. Their bodies moved to a gentle rhythm that came from inside of them. Sydney smiled up at him. "You know, when I was little, my mother and my father always used to dance around the kitchen as they made dinner. It's one of the memories I have that helps me to understand why my mother stuck around for six years. I think for a while there, she was really happy in this life."

"And are you happy?"

"I'm happy right now. And that's all that matters. We'll save the confusion and doubts for another time, another conversation."

"Agreed." Vaughn dipped her and brought her slowly back up to his body.

"You realize that it might be best if you didn't try to leave any time soon, right? I mean, you just chanced going outside about ten minutes ago. In my opinion, that means you have to stay at least until morning. Just to be on the safe side. If someone followed you, they'd give up watching by morning."

"Sydney Bristow, are you inviting me to stay the night?"

"Do you want to stay the night?" Sydney couldn't believe it. Did she just giggle at him?

"Yeah, I think I do."

"Good." She said as she wiggled out of his grip and over to the CD player. "Because I want to see if you can tango, Agent Vaughn."

"Oh no," he said shaking his head.

"Come on! It's the one dance I'm really great at."

"First off, I find it hard to believe that the tango is the only dance you're good at. Second, a warning. If you and I tangoed, I can't guarantee that I'll be able to keep my hands to themselves."

The music began to pulse in the background. She sauntered over to Vaughn and smiled seductively. Before he knew what was happening, he had his one hand on her lower hip and the other was placed in her right hand. She leaned over and whispered into his ear. "I don't know if I want you to keep your hands off of me, Vaughn.'

With one last smile, they began to dance.

~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ 

The first thing Sydney did when she woke up the next morning was reach across the bed. She was satisfied to feel him still lying next to her. Her life had become a crazy series of dreams lately, so she wouldn't have been surprised if the previous night had been a dream, too.

But it wasn't. She inched over and positioned herself right alongside of Vaughn. Unconsciously feeling her presence beside him, he put his arm around her, and she snuggled in.

For the first time in a long while, she felt secure, really secure. And safe.

~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ 

__

Sydney turned in circles staring at the massive forest she found herself in. She stopped as she felt herself get extremely dizzy. Her eyes focused just in time to see a blue and black striped door disappear.

"What is that supposed to mean?" she asked the empty forest.

"Bethany, where are you?" called a voice from behind her.

Smiling, she turned around and screamed, "Open up your eyes and look in front of you, Shawn. I'm right here."

She had gotten used to the whole procedure of these dreams that she wasn't surprised to see a young boy who looked exactly like Vaughn come out from behind one of the trees. He ran over to where she was standing and softly picked her up off of her feet.

"Brendan would kill us if he saw what we were doing," she said as he gently kissed her on the tip of her nose.

"Us? No way! You're his little sister. He'd never try to harm you. Me on the other hand, I happen to be in love with his little sister, and I'm his best friend. A best friend who, might I add, promised him that while he was away in the West Indies I would watch out and make sure that no one took advantage of his little sister."

"But I want you to take advantage of me," Sydney said as she nipped lightly at his bottom lip.

"I don't think I could refuse you even if I had a choice."

"Brendan's going to kill you," she teased.

Looking at her intently, he said, "It's worth it." He set her back down on her feet. "I came out here to tell you that your mother is looking for you. Seems like someone was supposed to go to the market today."

Sydney covered her face with her hands. "Oh my god! I forgot!" She began to run down the path back towards the village. She made it about ten yards away and then ran back to give Shawn, her brother's best friend, the biggest kiss she could imagine. "Will I see you later?"

"Of course," he said with a smile watching her run into the horizon.

Sydney tried to push the thought of Vaughn out of her head. She knew that she would have to get to the market and back within five minutes if her mother was going to believe the lie that she hadn't forgotten. Not watching where she was going and in such a rush, she ran straight into someone standing on the path.

"Pardon me," said an Irish voice. "I wasn't watching where you were going." 

This time Sydney was surprised. The man looked exactly like Sark. In her dreams, Vaughn and Sark had never both appeared in the same one. This was definitely something new. She could feel her stomach balling up in what she could only guess was excitement and a little bit of fear.

"That was a joke, lass," Sark said. "I'm Patrick Quinn."

"I know who you are," she said. She was still lying on the ground staring up at this man. "My family would kill me if they knew I was talking to you."

"I'm just the Irish ruffian who lives in the forest, huh? No matter where I go, it always turns out that way." He reached out his hand which she just stared at in horror. "I'm not going to hurt you. I just want to help you up."

Sydney shook her head and helped herself up without his aid. "It's no wonder that the whole town thinks you're bad. You go around with this mysterious air, knocking people over."

He laughed lightly. "I said I was sorry. So was that your beau that you were with?"

"No, that was my brother's best friend."

"You seem awfully close with your brother's best friend." She blushed noticeably. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to make you uncomfortable."

"No, it's all right. Shawn and I are in love, but he's not my beau."

Sydney began to walk, and Sark ran to catch up with her. "He's crazy, you know."

"What do you mean? He's of a perfectly sound mind."

"No, I mean he's crazy if he knows that you love him and he hasn't swept you up. You're the most beautiful woman I've seen, and if he can't see that, he's blind." Sydney blushed again. "I'd apologize for making you uncomfortable again, but I think I'm starting to like it."

"You're being awful forward, Mr. Quinn."

"Call me Patrick. And you are?"

"Bethany Taylor."

"Well, Bethie, it was nice to meet you, but I have to leave your company. I have a feeling we'll be seeing each other again real soon, my dear."

Sydney just stared in shock as this strange, mysterious man walked in the opposite direction they had been heading. The only thing ringing through her head was no one had ever called her by a nickname before.

In the next few weeks, Sydney fluctuated from spending her mornings with Shawn/Vaughn to spending her afternoons with Patrick/Sark. She was almost shocked at the fact that she was keeping two secret relationships.

These two men were so shockingly different. Patrick was so mysterious. He wouldn't tell her one thing about his life back in Ireland and how he had found himself in England. But the conversations they had were so fun and full of laughter. That was the exact opposite of Shawn. Conversations with him were always serious, but his words held so much meaning. He said so many beautiful things to her.

"Hello, Bethie."

Sydney jumped when she heard Patrick greet her. "What are you doing here?"

"Can't a man go for a walk when he feels the desire?"

"I'm… I'm meeting Shawn here in a couple of minutes."

"Well, I want to meet this Shawn. I want to actually talk with him. See if he really appreciates how great a gal he's found. Has he told you that you're beautiful yet?"

Sydney rolled her eyes. Patrick had started all their conversations with this question. He seemed to think that Shawn wasn't in love with her if he hadn't told her that she was beautiful. She found this theory completely ridiculous, but she had to admit that she was a little put off by the fact that he hadn't told her.

"No, he hasn't. But like I say every time you ask that question, it doesn't matter. He loves me."

"How can you tell?"

"Do we really have to discuss this?"

"Yes," he said wiggling his eyebrows at her.

She laughed. "Because when he kisses me, my heart speeds up. My mother always told me that that was how you could tell when a man was in love with you. He kissed you so well that you felt like your chest was going to burst." She noticed the way he was looking at her. "What? What did I say?"

Patrick didn't respond. He just leaned in and kissed her lightly on her lips. Pulling back, he placed his hand on her chest and asked, "Is that your heart I feel speeding up?"

"Take your hands off me," she insisted. It didn't sound very convincing to either one of them.

"Is this how fast your heart races when he kisses you?"

She couldn't lie. "Just as fast, yes."

"Hmmm." Patrick leaned in again and kissed her. This time, he wasn't gentle and the kiss was anything but light. Sydney felt her hands reach up to unconsciously play with the little curls at the base of the back of his neck. When he pulled away, she couldn't help but feel sad.

He reached down and grasped her hands. She felt him place one on her chest and one on his. "This is how fast your heart is supposed to beat, Bethie."

She could feel her head pounding harder than she had ever felt it before. His heart was pounding just as fast, almost in perfect beat with hers.

"Like I've told you every day since the one I met you, you are the most beautiful, most amazing woman I have ever met. And I can't hide the fact that I love you anymore."

"Excuse me," said a cold voice from behind them. "But I don't like how close you are to the woman I love."

Patrick stood up and looked Shawn in the eyes. "You must be Shawn. The man who Bethany thinks she loves and is in love with her."

"We are in love," Shawn said through skeptical eyes. "We both know that."

"Then, why would she want to kiss me?"

"You were taking advantage of her. I should kill you for that alone."

"Don't forget that I'm standing right here!" Sydney screamed. "I can speak for myself."  


"Then speak," Patrick said. "Tell this man that you don't love him, Bethie. That you'd rather spend your time with me."

"That's a laugh," Shawn replied. "She wouldn't lie like that if you had a knife to her side. Tell him, Bethany."

Sydney looked back and forth between the two men. She knew in her heart that she loved them both in completely different ways. Shawn was safe and familiar. She knew that she could count on him to be by her side for years and years. Patrick was the exact opposite. He was new, exciting, almost dangerous. She had never experience life to the fullest until she had met him.

"You love them both," echoed the voice inside her head.

"I can only pick one, though," she answered back.

Turning to the two men, she made her decision. "I love you--"

~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ 

Sydney almost screamed as she registered the sound of her alarm clock. If she had just stayed asleep for a few more minutes, she would have known which one she chose. And maybe that would have made her dreams and her life that much clearer.

"Are you all right?" Vaughn asked from beside her.

"You stayed the night." She smiled at him.

"Wild horses couldn't drag me away. I don't think I've ever told you this, Syd. But you are positively the most beautiful woman I have ever met."

If it was even possible, she grinned even wider.


	9. Okay

"I'm taking some time off," Sydney informed Vaughn later when they had both discretely left each other's companies and driven to work. "Just so you know. There are a few things I have to sort out. Maybe a clue or two to where I've been the last two years."

"I know that's been bothering you a lot lately," he said sincerely. "I can't say I won't miss you. You're the source of excitement in my life."

"If you only knew how tame I could really be."

"I'm looking forward to finding out, Syd."

She smiled at him and walked over to Kendall's office. All she had to do was turn in a few reports, and she was off for two whole, glorious weeks. She couldn't comprehend how she had convinced Kendall to give her so much time off. It must have something to do with a lull in SD-6 and Covenant activities.

After the reports had been turned in, she made her way back to her desk, being careful to avoid the area where Vaughn was talking to some other agents. She didn't want to have to speak to him again for fear that she would decide leaving him for two weeks was too much and cancel her vacation time. "And there's things I have to do," she said to herself.

She grabbed her jacket and keys and made her way to the parking garage below the facility. The parking garage always scared her slightly. It was always deserted, no matter what time of day, and so freezing cold. The only good thing was she wasn't afraid of being attacked or kidnapped like she always was in the SD-6 parking garage. The CIA parking garage was creepy, but no in a dangerous way.

Fumbling with her keys only somewhat, she popped open the locks on the car and slid into the driver's seat. The locks were relocked and she was on her way down a road that she wasn't sure she wanted to be taking.

Lying next to her on the passenger's side front seat was the business card Sark had left her. She didn't know what was at 59 Stanler Ave, but she was about to find out.

~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ 

This was not what she had expected. An abandoned warehouse, yes. An old business, sure. An apartment complex, fine. A used car lot, even that was possible. But this… this had not been expected.

In front of Sydney was the most beautiful house she had ever seen. It wasn't a mansion or anything that rich. It was just a simple little brick house that had a garden of lilies blooming in the front. That was her favorite type of flower. There was a small stone sidewalk leading up to the front door. The house had an eagle's nest on top of it, a property she had always admired in a house.

She parked her car a little ways down the street and grabbed the business card off the front seat. As she made her way to the stone path, she checked the address on the card with the one on the mailbox. She was in the right place. This was 59 Stanler Ave.

There were no cars in the driver, she noticed. And no lights were on in the house. Sark hadn't said that she would need to tell anyone she was coming here. He just told her that it was part of her missing two years. Pocketing her car keys, she walked up to the front door and went to knock on it.

The first knock pushed the door open silently. She debated it for a moment and then stepped into the house, closing the door behind her softly. If whomever lived her wasn't smart enough to lock their doors, it wasn't her fault. The house had a very homey feel to it. Nothing was familiar to her, though. "How does this fit in with me?" she asked herself quietly.

She walked around the front room stopping every once in a while to look closer at or pick up an object. The most intriguing item in the room was sitting on the coffee table. It was a leather-bound copy of _Emma_ by Jane Austen. This was her favorite book of all time, which was something she had never told anyone. Most of her colleagues would probably laugh in her face if they knew her hidden love of "silly, sentimental, romantic" books. She had never seen such a beautiful looking copy of the book in print.

Intrigued, she picked it up and looked on the inside cover. In a rather small, sharp, slanted print was an inscription.

"I know you would never admit to me how much you adore this book, but you never have had to use words to tell me what you're thinking or feeling. I adore you twice as much as you love this book. I dream of the day when I can call you mine in front of the whole world."

Sydney felt a little twing in her chest. This book and its inscription seemed familiar, but her memory wasn't being jogged that much. She set the book down and moved to the next room.

The kitchen was exactly as she would have pictured it. Everything had a very metallic, cool feeling, but as a whole, it didn't lose its comfortable home atmosphere. She decided to pass the majority of the kitchen over. She could always come back to it. And there was a beautiful wooden spiraling staircase in the corner of the kitchen that she was dying to climb.

The staircase was made of a dark cherry wood, and the banister has words engraved all the way up it.

__

"My bounty is as boundless as the sea,

My love as deep; the more I give to thee,

The more I have, for both are infinite."

Sydney was surprised to realize that she recognized the quote. It was from Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. "Act Two, Scene One," she whispered. She had taken a class in Shakespeare in high school, and this was her favorite quote. This staircase was a work of art in itself. She ran her hand up and down the bumps of the wood engraving and read the words aloud again softly to herself.

Trying to push back the eeriness of this new development and harness how much it intrigued her, she stepped off the staircase into a small hallway.

There were only two doors in the hallway. Sydney realized that this house was just as small and quaint as it appeared from the outside. The walls looked like they had had pictures on them at one time. The paint was dull around square shaped areas in the hall. "Odd. Why would someone take down all the pictures?" she asked out loud. Pushing that thought out of her mind, she chose the door on the left and pushed it open.

It was a bedroom. She immediately began to investigate. If any room in the house would give her clues as to who lived here, this would be the one. The walls were painted a dark blue that matched the ambiance of the room perfectly. Whoever lived here, they weren't in to flowery, pretty things.

Sydney would have immediately guessed that it was a man's bedroom if she didn't notice a few key items. There was a bottle of rather feminine smelling perfume sitting on the dresser. Sniffing it, she wasn't surprised to realize that she liked it quite a bit. The closet wasn't any help. There was nothing in it except for a couple t-shirts and a pair of male sweatpants.

She turned to walk back over to the bed and look through the nightstand next to it. A sudden noise made her stop. Or rather a sudden lack of noise. She hadn't realized it when she had first entered the room, but there had been the sound of a steady stream of water. Almost as if someone was taking… a… shower…

Before she could process what had just happened and what was about to happen, the door on the wall opposite where she was standing opened. She stared in shock as Sark emerged from the bathroom in nothing but a hastily fastened towel around his hips.

He stopped dead in his tracks as soon as he saw her. It almost made Sydney want to laugh as she witnessed the first crack she had ever seen in his ever-present cool exterior. "I didn't expect you to follow my advice so soon, Sydney," he managed to say after a moment. She wasn't surprised to see his guarded exterior restore itself as a smirk played across his face.

"You told me that part of my missing two years was here. So I decided to check it out." She broke her eyes away from him hesitantly and looked down at her feet. "Does this really have anything to do with my missing two years? Or did you just want to find a way to get me to come to where you lived?"

Sark walked over to her and gently brought her chin up so that she was looking him in the eyes again. "Let me show you something."

Sydney felt him slip his hand into hers and guide her over to the nightstand she had been about to search. She tried to focus on the feeling of his hand in hers and not on the fact that there was just a thin layer of terrycloth covering up his body. He opened the small drawer and began to riffle around for something.

"Don't you want to get dressed?" she blurted out. Realizing that she probably shouldn't have let him know how uncomfortable his half-nakedness was making her, she cursed silently.

He grabbed something out of the drawer and looked up at her. "Do I make you nervous, Sydney?"

"No. I just thought that you might be a little uncomfortable."

"You've seen me in a lot less," he said with a laugh as he handed the found object over to her.

She stared at the picture frame in shock. It was a simple wood picture frame with the words engraved on it. Inside the frame was a picture of herself and Sark sitting on the couch she had seen in the front room of the house. She was laughing at the camera as Sark softly kissed her neck.

Not knowing what to say, she looked up at him in confusion.

"If I know what love is, it is because of you," he said the words that were engraved below the picture. "It's Herman Hesse. Those were the words you said to me every night right before you fell asleep. You gave me this picture right before you left. It used to hang with a lot more in the hall. I took them down because I couldn't stand the fact that you weren't here with me anymore. You see, this isn't just my house, Sydney. This was our home."

She still couldn't form the words she needed to ask him the questions that were flying through her mind. He put his hands softly on her shoulders and made her sit down on the bed. Not saying a word, he went over to the closet and threw on one of the t-shirts. He grabbed the pair of sweatpants and went to put them on. Pausing, he turned to her. "You might want to turn away since I seem to make you uncomfortable."

Sydney's eyes widened and she did as she was told. For her own good, she turned her attention back to the photo. After a moment, she felt the slight shift in the bed's mattress as Sark sat down next to her. She looked up at him. "I look so happy."

"I like to think that you were," he said sincerely.

"That book downstairs?" she asked.

"I gave that to you on our one year anniversary."

"The inscription?"

"I meant every word of it." He placed his hand on top of hers. "I still do, even if you don't remember." He noticed her getting slightly uncomfortable. "I'm sorry if you find this odd."

"I just can't get used to the fact that you're treating me with such respect and kindness."

"I always treated you with respect, Sydney. Even when we were enemies. And it's hard for me now not to treat you with kindness and love. I know that I seem completely out of character to you, but it's who I am now. You weren't around to see me change for you, at least not that you can remember."

"But you seemed to act pretty normal when you woke me up in the airport and on the plane ride back home. You were the normal, cocky bastard I've come to loathe."

"I was only doing what you asked me to. I was pretending like our relationship had never changed. And, anyway, no matter what we do, I think we'll always have our witty banter to fall back on."

"I always did have something to argue about with you. I'll give you that."

Sighing, he stood up. "This is weird for you, I can tell. I'm going to leave. I didn't plan on being here when you finally checked out the address anyway. I don't want to scare you away, Syd. I just wanted you to remember how happy you were here. I wanted to see if maybe I could get a second chance with you. I apologize if that was wrong for me to want."

He felt her hand grasped his arm as he moved to step away from the bed. "Don't go," she whispered. "I don't think I'll be able to understand what this house meant to me without you here to explain it. As much as I find this situation unfamiliar, I really do want to understand what happened between us in the two years I can't remember. I want to know."

Sydney knew that inviting him to stay was not going to make the situation she found herself in any easier. But for some reason, she wanted him here. "Maybe I'm remembering a little," she thought. "Maybe I'm starting to believe that he is telling me the truth."

Sark grasped the hand that was holding his arm and pulled Sydney up off the bed. "Will you let me show you something else?"

She nodded her head. Inside she couldn't believe that she was acting so civil to the one man she thought she was despise no matter what happened. It was as if she was walking around in a haze. She partly blamed the effect her strange dreams were having on her, and partly she realized that being civil to Sark had become almost natural. Another reason why she was starting to believe that this wasn't an elaborate ruse to get to her, but it might actually be the truth.

Sark led her out into the hallway and through the other door. It opened up straight into a staircase. With a slight mischievous smile back her way, he led her up the stairs. It was a large, open room that must have been the eagle's nest she saw from the outside. Each wall contained a bay window protruding out from it. One wall had small window seat built into it. In the middle of the room were a mattress and a large number of pillows.

"What is this place?" she asked looking around. She walked over to the window seat and lightly fingered the pile of well-worn paperbacks that were sitting on it.

"I built this for you," he said simply.

"You built this for me?" she asked incredulously as she turned to look at him. She laughed. "I want to believe that all this is true. But everything that you're saying doesn't sound a thing like the Sark I know."

He grinned at her. "I changed a lot in the two years you can't seem to remember. You taught me a lot about the person I really am. Yes, I am that cold-hearted man you encountered so many times in the field. But for some reason, I have this soft spot for you that makes me do things that I would otherwise find mushy and foolish."

Sydney said down on the mattress in the middle of the floor and after a moment, Sark joined her. "Will you tell me what's wrong with you?" he asked.

Looking into his eyes, she saw that he appeared to be really concerned. "What do you mean?"

"You might now remember it, Sydney, but I know you well enough to know when something's bothering you. Please. Tell me."

"This is all too weird," she said, trying to stand up. Sark grabbed her arm and pulled her back down beside him gently. Sighing, she gave in. "I've been having these weird dreams. At first I thought they were just that. But it seems that a few of them were actually memories. I remember you saving me in Queenstown. And I think I remember you proposing. Or least one of my dreams seemed to have the general idea of how you proposed."

"And you're bothered by the fact that you actually felt something for me in your dreams?" She nodded. "I know how much this is probably killing you, then."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"I know that you just started a relationship with your CIA handler, Sydney."

"Yes, I did," she said matter-of-factly.

"When you first recovered from your amnesia, I had taken you to Paris. You told me how you dreamed of being able to bring him to a restaurant in the Latin Quarter. You told me how much you thought you were in love with him."

"I was really free with the information when I was with you, wasn't I?"

"You trusted me, Sydney. And that was why I was able to trust you so much. For some reason, you trusted me blindly, and I'd never experienced that before."

"The sun set a little bit ago," she commented. "I should get back."

"To what? Didn't you take my suggestion and get some time off from the CIA?"

"Yes."

  
"Well, then why do you have to go?" She had no answer, so he just kept talking. "Lean back."

"I am not laying down on this mattress with you."

"I'm not going to take advantage of you." A devilish grin came over his face. "Unless you want me to."

"I don't trust you."

Sighing, Sark laid down on his back and pulled Sydney next to him. "Why do you always have to be so difficult?"

"I keep forgetting that you actually know me. I feel like we're strangers. Strangers who are supposed to hate each other with a passion," she added.

"The passion part is right." He winked at her.

"Why am I laying down next to you again?"

He didn't answer her. He just pointed up at the ceiling. Looking up, she gasped.

When she had entered the room, it didn't even occur to her to look up at the ceiling. If she had, she would have noticed there wasn't one, at least not in the strictest sense. There was only a massive skylight. And at this moment, she could see a million stars through it.

She sat in silence and gazed up at them. In the back of her head, she probably realized that this was another thing Sark had done for her during the time they had called this place home. He had mentioned that he built this beautiful room for her.

Sark turned to look at Sydney's face as she continued to star up at the stars. She could feel his eyes on her, but she chose to ignore it. It was making her feel both slightly uneasy and all tingly inside at the same time. He slipped his hand into hers and whispered, "I think we dream so that we don't have to be apart so long. If we're in each other dreams, we can be together all the time."

She turned to face him. "I love Michael Vaughn," she whispered.

"I know that," he replied softly.

"Then why am I here?" she asked, more to herself than to him. She could feel herself leaning in towards him slightly.

"I don't know."

"Me either."

She knew what she was doing was a direct contradiction to what she had just said, but she couldn't stop herself. Letting go of all the boundaries she had built, she pressed her lips to his.

His lips tasted sweet. Shockingly sweet.

And so familiar. Strangely familiar.

She wasn't surprised to realize that it felt almost familiar. What she was surprised to realize was that it not only felt familiar, it felt almost right. And she couldn't help herself. She wanted more.

The feeling of his hands as they ran light touches up and down her arms were causing goose bumps. And the urgency of his kisses was making her heart beat faster. She didn't even realize that she had started to bite gently on his bottom lip until she heard him groan.

After a moment, Sark pulled away to look at her. He reached up and brushed a stray lock of hair out of her eyes. "Stay with me. Please. I'll take you for as long as I can get you, Sydney."

She knew that the best thing for her to do was say no, get up, and walk out of the home she never knew she had. That was what her head was telling her to do. But instead, she smiled at the man she had once considered her worst enemy and whispered "okay".


	10. Anna Karenina

Sydney lay next to him, not saying a word. She knew that they were both in a little disbelief that she had agreed to stay with him. "Don't you have business to do?" she asked.

"You are my top priority, Syd."

She sat up. "And you sound like a hopeless romantic, Mr. Sark. I never would have guessed that one."

"A boy has to have his secrets. Otherwise, the women will live him for younger, more intriguing men." Sark stood up and offered his hand to Sydney.

She accepted and found herself being led back downstairs. "Where are we going?"

"It's getting late. I'm sure you're hungry."

She was about to deny it when her stomach growled loudly. "All right. I guess I am. So, where are we going?"

Sark looked at her in confusion. "I don't know where you go when you're hungry, but I usually try to go to the kitchen."

"Oh. I thought you were taking me out somewhere to get food."

"That wasn't in our agreement. You agree to spend your vacation time here with me. In this house. We're not going to leave."

"What about clothes?" she asked as he led her down the spiral staircase into the kitchen.

"Who needs clothes?" he said with a smirk. Seeing her horrified look, he laughed. "I'm just kidding. There are some clothes in boxes in the basement. I packed them up a few weeks ago. Couldn't stand seeing your clothes without having you here to wear them."

Sydney took a seat at one of the breakfast stools while Sark began rifling through the cupboards. He stood up with a bag of sugar in his hands and nodded towards a door on the left wall. "Why don't you go downstairs and get some clothes to change in to? I'll have the food started by the time you get back."

"You can actually cook?" she said with a shocked look on her face.

"A sophisticated guy like me? Of course I can cook." He smiled at her. "It's how I get the ladies."

She laughed and went through the door he had pointed out. He had spoken the truth. There were about ten boxes full of clothes. She recognized a lot of them as being her style.

Suddenly she was taken aback. When had she shifted from complete disbelief to complete certainty? When had she decided that Sark was telling her the truth and they had really been in love once?

She was beginning to feel uneasy about being in the house alone with him. Which is why she decided to take her time and go through every box.

~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~

When she made her way back upstairs, she was greeted by the most amazing smell. She sat down on the same stool she had been sitting on earlier and just watched him dart back and forth, checking a pan here, mixing the contents of a bowl there.

After a few minutes, he looked up. Sydney was surprised to see his smile get wider. "What do you have there?" he said, nodding at the clothes in her hand.

"I found these in the boxes of my clothes. I think they're yours."  


"They are mine. But then, so is that t-shirt you're wearing."

"Oh."

Sark laughed. "They're yours, though. You stole them from me. You said they reminded you of me when I couldn't be around. Something about my natural smell being embedded on them. I can't say I ever really understood. It must have been a girl thing."

Sydney couldn't help it. She lifted the clothes in her hands up to her nose and sniffed. There was a distinct musky, male smell to them. "They smell familiar," she stated simply. She set the clothes down on the counter. "What are you making?"

"Your favorite," he said without thinking.

"Snow crab pasta primavera?" she answered back without thinking.

  
"Yeah." Sark looked up at her as he realized what was going on.

"I guess some things don't change," she said with a smile. "What else?"

"Caramel cheesecake."

"All right. I believe you. You do know the way to my heart." She stood up and walked over to where he was standing. "What can I do to help?"

He looked over and smiled at her. "I have it under control." He saw her looking at him strangely. "What's the matter?"

"You have a little…" She reached out and brushed the batter on his face away lightly with her finger. It didn't go without notice that her hand lingered a little longer than necessary on his cheek.

Absentmindedly, Sydney licked the batter off of her finger. "You shouldn't do that," she heard him say.

Looking up at him, her heart fluttered when she saw Sark's eyes darken with what she could only assume was desire. She wasn't used to having this dramatic effect on him. In the back of her head, a little voice admitted that she could get used to this.

"I have a question," she said, trying to break the intense mood.

"Ask me anything you want, Sydney." Sark had turned back to the cooking in an obvious attempt to try to keep control of himself.

"If you and I were trying to hide from the CIA, how did we end up back in Los Angeles?"

"Are you sure you want to hear this? We could take it a little slow at first." She nodded at him to go ahead and tell her. "When you agreed to marry me in Berlin, we figured it was time we returned home. A whole life on the run wasn't really in our plans, and as much as we were dreading it, it was actually nice to return to the States. And you wanted to tell your father and mother about us."

"Now that's hard to believe."

"I didn't believe it myself. But you told me that you weren't going to feel ashamed for what had happened between us. And that if they really loved you, they would accept your feelings for me." He grinned at her. "I think you're the bravest woman I've ever met, Sydney Bristow."

"I would have to be if I was willing to fight my father on that issue." She walked over to the stove and stirred the sauce on the burner. "Is this the kind of night we had normally?"

"Pretty much."

"What does pretty much mean?"

"I have to say that the mood was always a little lighter than it is right now." He walked out of the room and a few seconds later, Sydney heard one of her favorite songs echoing through the house.

Sark came back into the room and held his hand out to her. "May I have this dance?"

Sydney slid her hand into his, and he slowly twirled her around the kitchen floor. She got chills down her spine as she felt Sark's breath near her ear as he sang softly to her. "You're just too good to be true, can't take my eyes off of you."

He spun her around in a small circle and then pulled her back in close to his body. "I always thought you would be a good dancer."

"You're not so bad yourself, Bristow."

It should have worried her, but the domestic feeling that was creeping into her heart felt natural. And when Sark kissed her lightly on the outer corner of her eye, she couldn't help but sigh.

~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ 

A week later, Sydney found herself sitting on the couch in the front room typing away on her laptop and cursing Sloane rather vocally for giving her work to do while she was on vacation. As much as she hated to admit it, her life felt normal here in this house with Sark. He wasn't pushing her to do anything she didn't want to. In fact, he was almost discouraging it. Her opinion of him had slowly begun to change.

And the fact that he was currently sitting on the other end of the couch watching TV and absentmindedly rubbing her feet which happened to be in his lap didn't hurt her opinion of him, either.

The ring of Sydney's cell phone interrupted their happy little scene. Sark groaned as she reached over and picked it up off the coffee table. She laughed at the face he was making while she checked the caller ID. When she saw who it was, her face paled.

"What's wrong?" he asked over the still ringing phone.

"It's Vaughn," she whispered.

"Don't pick it up."

"I have to," she said with a frown. She hit the answer button and put the phone up to her ear. "Bristow."

"Syd, it's me," said the familiar voice on the other end.

"Hey."

"Hey back. How's your vacation going? Are you getting your head straightened out?"

"I'm trying my best," she said, looking intently at Sark. "It's a little hard, though. There have been… distractions."

Sark grinned at her wickedly. Before she knew what was happening, he had leaned over and was trailing kisses along her neck. She tried to swat him away, but it wasn't really working. It's not like she actually wanted him to stop.

"Syd? Are you listening?" Vaughn asked.

  
"I'm sorry. You caught me while I was trying to type up something to help organize my thoughts. I was a little wrapped up."

"Not a problem. When are you coming home? I miss you."

"I don't know. I have another week of vacation left." Sydney almost laughed when she saw the gleam of hope in Sark's eye. It seems like there were two men in her life that wanted that week all to themselves.

"Come home early. You can hole yourself up in my apartment."

"I can't. I really need to figure these things out."

Vaughn sighed. She could practically imagine him on the other end, a worried look on his face, hands running through his hair in frustration. "All right. Just try to keep me updated. I want to see you as soon as you get back."

Sydney bit her lip to keep from moaning. Sark's hands had begun to roam a little too much for comfort. "Okay. I promise. Good bye."

She could hear Vaughn hesitate slightly before saying goodbye. In her mind, she couldn't help thinking that he was debating whether or not to say I love you. "It's better that he didn't," she thought to herself.

Turning her mind back to the problem on hand, she pulled Sark's head up to her eye level. "What the hell do you think you were doing?" He gave her an innocent look. "Oh don't play that card with me!"

"What?" he said, continuing with the innocent act.

"I'm getting a shower," she informed him, standing up.

He watched in silence as she left the room. "Yeah, that definitely got to her," he murmured to himself. "She's starting to crack."

~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ 

After a few minutes of standing under the spray of icy cold water, Sydney finally got herself to calm down. She felt horrible about yelling at Sark. It wasn't like she was actually mad about him. She had never told him to keep his hands off when she talked with Vaughn. That would make the whole situation seem too married-woman-other-man like.

The real reason she yelled at him was she was afraid of the feelings he was stirring up inside of her. She knew that the phone call from Vaughn cooled her off a little, but if Sark had kept up what he had been doing, she didn't think she could hold herself responsible for her actions.

She heard noises coming from the bedroom, and she silently cursed herself for forgetting to shut the bathroom door. She flipped the water off quickly and went to open the shower door. But it was already open. And, like the first time she had seen this house, Sark was standing in front of her in just a towel.

"Don't get out because of me," he said with a smirk.

She tried her best to discretely cover herself without him noticing. "What are you doing?"

"I need to shower too, you know. And stop doing that." He grabbed her arms and pulled them to her side. "You're too beautiful to cover up."

She looked into his eyes for a moment, trying to gauge if he was speaking the truth or if it was just another one of his lines. Before she could stop herself, she grabbed the back of his neck and brought his lips crashing to hers.

Sark managed to grab the shower door and close it behind himself as Sydney reached down with one hand to unfasten his towel. She let her hands roam up and down his chest. It felt so good to just let her emotions control her actions for once. She had never realized how much she wanted to just feel his body pressed up against hers, the weight and solidness of it, his smooth skin, his beating heart. She didn't want to have to worry about the consequences at this moment. She just wanted to be lost in him.

He pushed her up against the back wall of the shower and fumbled to turn the water on again. It took him at least three tries as her hands were freely roaming in areas that he had never guessed she would want to stray. As the ice cold water poured down on them, Sydney gasped.

"Were you taking a cold shower, Miss Bristow?" Sark asked between kisses. "Now why was that?"

"Don't talk," she growled. She felt her weight being lifted off the ground, and she wrapped her legs around his waist. His kisses moved their way from her collarbone down to her breasts. For a moment, she focused on her total disbelief at what she was about to do with one of her largest adversaries.

Then the day-old stubble on his chin rubbed the sensitive curve of her breast, and she lost all thought. Her hands grasped his back roughly, and she could hear him hiss as her nails dug in. His hands were making their way up and down her body with such complete control and care.

All thoughts of the problems in her life were dashed away as she felt him slip his fingers inside her and begin to move at a steady pace. She cried out his name loudly, not caring if that anyone within five miles could probably hear her. She silently thanked the fact that Sark hadn't tried to heat up the water that was pouring down on them. It was the only thing that was keeping her from losing her head completely.

His eyes met hers, and they mirrored her intensity perfectly. In them, she could see the complete, clear truth. This man loved her unconditionally.

"I want you to make love to me," she said huskily.

"I've been waiting for you to say those words for so long," he whispered as he slowly entered her. It was excruciatingly slow yet astonishingly perfect. "I love you so much."

This wasn't a thing like she had imagined it would be. She had expected him to take her fast and hard, just like she'd seen him do everything else. It wasn't supposed to be this tender. It wasn't supposed to be this full of love. She didn't know what to do with this new side of Sark. And at the moment, she didn't really care.

As she felt herself begin to build, something dawned on her. "You're holding back," she moaned. "Don't. Oh god. Don't."

She saw his eyes flare with desire and want. It was at that moment that she felt the strange pleasure in knowing that she had complete control of him. He pulled back and turned her so that she was cradled in his arms. She growled slightly at the loss she felt without him inside of her.

Sark practically kicked the shower door open in an effort to carry her over to the bed. She smiled at the rightness of that action. They had probably shared so many tender filled nights in this very bed. Instead of picking up where they left off, he surprised her by placing her body on the bed and taking a step back, appreciating.

"You are the most exquisite thing on this earth, Sydney Bristow. Never forget it. I could just look at you forever and be happy."

"Get over here," she said with a smile.

He lay down on the bed next to her. "I want to see you," he said as he slid his hand between her thighs and pressed into her. Her breath quickened. He watched as panic, pleasure, and excitement passed over her face. She could feel herself climbing closer and closer, her breath tearing, her hands clinging to whatever she could find. She finally released a strangled cry as she peaked over the edge.

After a moment, she tried to shake her head clear of the overwhelming feeling, but the dizziness wouldn't go away. She felt drunk and dazed and unspeakably aroused. Sark felt her pull him close to her as she whispered the need for more into his ear in that throaty voice he had always loved best. The voice that had cemented his resolve to become the man he thought she deserved to be with.

"Julian," she whispered, and it was all he could do to contain himself.

Their long, groaning sighs blended together as he positioned himself over her and entered. When he began to move, they moved together, the pace slowly speeding up as she urged for more. Together, almost as if they had never been apart, they drifted over the edge.

Sark let himself fall down into a heap next to her. He trailed a few small kisses on the side of her neck and whispered into her ear. "I've never done that before."

"Come on," she said, looking at him incredulously. "You mean to tell me that you and I have never made love in the shower before?"

He turned to her and grinned. "We never made it to the shower."

"We weren't in there for that long this time, either."

"Next time." When she smiled back at him, he worked up the courage to ask her a question that had been on his mind for a few minutes. "When did you learn my name was Julian?"

"In a dream I had…" She paused wondering if she should be telling him this. "In a dream I had where you proposed to me. It was in Berlin." She laughed, remembering. "My hair was this crazy bright red color, and I was wearing this sleek little black number. You proposed, and then…" Her voice trailed off when she saw the startled look on his face. "What's the matter? What did I say?"

  
"Sydney, I never told you about the time we spent in Berlin. I never mentioned to you that you had dyed your hair red so that no one would recognize you that easily. And the night I proposed you were wearing a dress I had picked out for you in Munich early that week. A little black dress that looked like it had been made to fit your body. How could you have known all that?"

"I don't know," she admitted. Her face paled as she remembered the rest of her dream. "I didn't walk out on you, did I?"

"No. Why would you think that?"

Sydney let out the breath she hadn't realized she was holding. "No reason."

They sat in silence staring at each other for a moment before he spoke again. "What does this mean, Sydney?"

"I honestly don't know." She cursed herself as she felt tears begin to well up in her eyes. The best bet would have been to pretend she didn't know what he was talking about. But she couldn't bring herself to do that. Not after what had just happened between them.

Noticing the tears, he said, "Don't cry. You don't have to think about it now." He reached down and grabbed a blanket that was at the end of the bed. He pulled her into the crook of his arm and used the blanket to cover them both up. "Just get some rest. You can deal with it later."

"When did you get so understanding?" she managed to say before exhaustion took over.

~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ 

__

Sydney yawned and leaned over in bed. She felt the warmth of a body next to hers and smiled. It hadn't been a dream. She was actually lying in bed after a night of making love with Julian Sark. "I think I'm falling in love with you, Julian," she whispered.

"If I wasn't so secure in myself, I would be slightly put off by the fact that you just said another man's name, Syd."

She froze in horror as she realized it wasn't Sark she was laying next to her. It was Vaughn.

"Michael," she screamed sitting straight up.

"Yes," he said with a smile. "Michael Vaughn. Your husband. Me, Michael. You, Sydney Vaughn."

"Don't patronize me," she said, trying to sound as believable as possible. The last thing she remembered was falling asleep in Sark's arms. She didn't know how much time had passed since then.

"I was just kidding. We only got married last night, Syd. I don't expect you to remember that when you're still half asleep." He laughed lightly. "You sound so defensive. Is this something I'm going to have to get used to in our future years of wedded bliss?"

She nodded and lay back down next to him, carefully positioning herself so she was facing away from him. This situation was too hard to process. She felt Vaughn's arms wrap around her as he snuggled in close. "I'm so glad I talked you into coming back from your vacation early. And I can't believe you got everything sorted out in only one week. No more horrible, reoccurring dreams. Just a crazy girl standing on my doorstep begging me to go to Vegas with her."

~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ 

Sydney sat straight up in bed. Quickly, she looked over at the man sleeping next to her and was satisfied to see that this time it was the one she expected. Sighing, she carefully got out of the bed without waking up Sark.

She tiptoed down the stairs and into the front room. There hadn't really been time to explore this place any further. Now was as good a time as any, considering she couldn't sleep at all. She grabbed the first book she could find off the shelf. "Anna Karenina," she said to herself. "Must be one of Sark's books."

She flipped it open, and the fact that it was her handwriting on the inscription didn't surprise her. The inscription, however, did.

"Julian, I know you told me that you never read this book, but I know you are lying. I agree with your idea that we need to form a name for our home. Everything good in life has a name. And in the spirit of the book, I've chosen "St. Petersburg". I love you."

Sydney dropped the book out of her hands as her grip lost its strength. The words St. Petersburg echoed through her mind. A previous dream she had had flashed through her thoughts.

She was sitting in bed, after having made love to Vaughn. He accused her of having a forbidden business partnership with Sark. And then he asked her if she had slept with Sark yet. And she had answered yes, in…

"St. Petersburg." It came out as a whisper, but the words carried such weight.

She figured she sat in the dark with just a blanket wrapped around her for a good half hour before Sark woke up and found her. When he did, she refused to explain anything. She just said she had to leave. He asked if she was coming back, but she didn't answer.

She just knew that she had to leave St. Petersburg.


	11. Difficult Choices

Sydney couldn't believe that she had to sneak through the hedges to see her boyfriend, but that was exactly what she was doing. She was outside of Vaughn's house trying to figure out a way to get in without being detected by anyone. The CIA wasn't above setting up cameras on one of their agent's homes.

Doing a quick scan, she crept to the back door of the house and was surprised to find it unlocked. She had always pictured Vaughn as a three padlocks kind of guy. Immediately when she set foot in the house, a small dog came yipping up to her ankles.

"Donavon, what are you doing?" she heard Vaughn's voice yell from the other room.

She bent down and petted the small dog. "So, you're Donavon. It's a pleasure to finally meet you." The dog didn't even have time to smile before he was being scooped up and carried to his master. "Look who he found," she said as she entered the room.

"Syd! You're back." Vaughn stood up and leaped over the back of the couch. "What are you doing here?"

Sydney set Donovan down. "If you want me to, I'll leave."

Vaughn grabbed her arm and pulled her to his body. "No way."

She should have expected him to give her a hello kiss, but this wasn't what she expected. The heat and passion between them went right back to the massively high level it had been during their "frustration" stage. She let herself surrender to the familiarity of it for a moment, but the memory of where she had been made her pull away.

"I missed you, Syd," Vaughn said with a smile.

"I missed you, too." She tried to push all other thoughts out of her head. "It's hard being without my guardian angel."

"So, explain. Where were you this whole time?"

She quickly debated about whether or not she should tell him the truth, finally settling on a half-truth. "I haven't been telling you the whole truth about what's been going on. Yes, I have been trying to uncover the truth about where the past two years went. Yes, I went to see my mother to see if she could help. But there's something else to it."

"You can tell me, Syd."

"I told you that I've been having these dreams. They're about my missing two years, and you…" She paused before continuing. "And Sark."

"You have been dreaming about Sark?" She could read the shock on his face. "Unbelievable."

"I know. It's been really working me over inside. Anyway, that day I met you for lunch, you said I seemed distracted. It was because I had had a conversation with Sark just before that. He pulled me into his car. Vaughn, he knows where I've been the past two years."

"How could he know that? No one we've interrogated has had a clue."

"He knows that because I was with him the whole time. It seems that I wanted a vacation from the CIA, and he… well, he wasn't the man you had in custody."

"If this wasn't so unbelievable, I don't think I'd believe it." He sat down on the couch, and Sydney curled herself up next to him.

"He had a double made of himself and that was the man you had in CIA custody the whole time I was missing. I lived with the real Sark in Berlin and then in Los Angeles."  


"You were in Los Angeles?"

"Yes." She could see anger building up inside of him. "Don't get mad at Sark. It was my choice to stay hidden."

"Do you remember making that choice? Or is that just what he told you?"

"Both. He told me it, and then I felt the truth in my heart. When he grabbed me out of the parking garage, he left me with a business card. He said it was a clue to where I've been. And that if I was ready to find out, I should go there."

"So that's where you went. That's the reason you wanted a sudden two weeks off." Vaughn sat back on the couch and rubbed his face with his hands. "What was at the address?"

"It was the home I built with Sark." She paused, wondering one last time if she should be telling him all this. "He was there. He didn't mean to be, but he was."

"And you've been staying with him this whole week? Sydney, I can't believe the words that are coming out of your mouth. What's happening to you?"

"I haven't changed just because I wanted to stay and find out more about the two years I can't remember."

"But you chose to stay with Sark. You hate Sark."

The words slipped out of her mouth before she could stop them. "I don't hate him."

She could see Vaughn struggle for a reply to that comment, but no words came out.

"I don't love him," she mumbled.

"But you did stay with him. For a week. In a house that you once lived in as a couple."

Sydney looked at his eyes and saw the hurt deep within them. She knew that she couldn't tell him anymore of the truth, not now. It would kill him to know that she had agreed to marry another man. And, no matter what happened, she loved Michael Vaughn. He could never know what went on between her and Sark the past week. Never.

She felt Vaughn's hand wrap around her wrist, and he pulled her over to him. "I'm sorry, Syd. You must be overwhelmed with everything that's happened the past few weeks. Honestly, I'm just glad that you're back."

"Me, too," she said honestly as she snuggled down next to him. "Things are so much clearer when I'm with you."

Vaughn didn't say a word in return. He just turned on the TV to whatever hockey game was on primetime ESPN. Sydney felt herself drift off thinking about the normalness of the situation. "This was how it felt to be home," she thought.

~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ 

__

Before she even noticed a change, she could feel the cool, ocean water lap up against her ankles and the grainy sand between her toes. The scenery around her had changed once more. She was standing on the most beautiful beach she had ever seen. The sky was a vibrant aqua-green color that went perfectly with the deep blue of the ocean. There was not a cloud in sight.

Sighing, she reached down and dipped her hand into the ocean. She lifted her fingers up to her lips and tasted the saltiness. This was part of a ritual she had done since she was small and her father had taken her to see the Pacific Ocean for the first time.

"You have the strangest habits," she heard Sark say from behind her.

"And you don't?" she said back without turning around to face him.

He walked over to her and wrapped his arms around her waist. "So, do you like it here?"  


"It's not exactly our little house in Los Angeles, but I can get used to being a citizen of Belize. It's gorgeous here."

"It doesn't compare to you." She turned around and smiled at him. "How is your hand doing?"

For the first time, Sydney realized that there was something wrong with her hand. There was scar tissue covering up what had once been a massive gash from the base of her index finger to halfway up her forearm. "It doesn't hurt that much today. And the throbbing hasn't been that bad."

Sark smiled at her and knelt down in the sand, putting his face parallel to her stomach. He lightly placed his palm on her abdomen. "And how is my little man doing?"

"He hasn't kicked all morning. It's a miracle."

"You don't regret your decision, do you?" he said, standing up and looking at her seriously.

"Not at all. I can't imagine anything different."

~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ 

Sydney woke up with a start and immediately placed her hands on her stomach. Nothing felt different. But the dream had been so realistic.

"Is everything okay?" Vaughn asked groggily from his half of the bed.

"Just another dream." Sydney took in her surroundings. "How did I get in your bedroom?"

"I carried you. You feel asleep on the couch five hours ago." He turned over and smiled at her. "You could have told me that hockey always puts you to sleep. I would have changed the channel."

"I'll have you know that I love hockey. I find it incredibly exciting when I'm not completely exhausted." She stood up. "I should get going. If Kendall found out that I spent the night here, we're both dead."

Vaughn grabbed her arm and yanked her back down onto the bed next to him. "Well, if we're both going to get in trouble for this, we might as well make it completely worth our while."

"Michael Vaughn! I am appalled. Are you actually asking me to sleep with you? What kind of woman do you think I am?"

"The kind I can't resist," he said while trailing kisses up and down her arm.

She hit him lightly on the head. "I'm leaving. A cold shower might do you some good."

Vaughn smiled at her sleepily, and she let out her breath. He hadn't felt her tense up at the mention of a cold shower. She gave him a quick kiss and made her way to the back door, stopping to pat Donovan on the way out.

Instead of turning right out of Vaughn's driveway in the direction of her house, she turned left. For some reason, she felt the need to talk with her mother about what was going on. It seemed that if anyone could help her sort things out, it would be Irina Derevko.

~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ 

"Mom," she whispered lightly. The cellblock was engulfed completely in darkness, what with it being three o'clock in the morning. Sydney could see her mother lying on the small cot and knew instinctively that she wasn't sleeping.

"What are you doing here, Sydney?" Irina asked as she turned over to look at her daughter. "Does Kendall need some more intel from me?"

"No. This is a personal call." Sydney took a seat on the floor next to the glass cell wall. "My life's even more of a mess than before. And it's all my fault."

"What did you do, Sydney?" Her mother looked at her strangely. "You didn't do something stupid like run off and marry that CIA handler of yours, did you?"  


"No. Something far worse. I slept with Sark."

Her mother tried her best to hold in a laugh. "What is wrong with that, Sydney? You were perfectly content to sleep with him in the two years you were away from the CIA."

"You knew where I was!" she hissed. "And you never told me? Unbelievable!"

"Sark asked me not to."

"When have you been in contact with Sark? You were in this cell before I disappeared, and you were in this cell when I came back."

"When Sark took you in while you were experiencing amnesia, he was still my employee. And he also knew that I was a worried parent. He sent word." Sydney nodded. Her mother was telling her the truth. "Imagine to my surprise when I didn't hear from him in eight months. Then, all of the sudden, I get a communiqué from his saying that he had found a wonderful life and no longer wished to be in my employment." Irina looked at her meaningfully. "I didn't learn out until much later that his decision was because of you."

"He was going to give up his life for me?"

Irina smiled wickedly. "He didn't tell you that bit, did he?"

"No," she mumbled, lost in her thoughts. 

"So I take it that things between you and Sark have changed considerably now?" Irina asked, drawing Sydney's mind back to the conversation at hand.

"He just seems so different than I remember. I can't even comprehend the changes he's gone through in the two years that we spent together, the two years I can't remember at all."

"So, is that why you're really here? You wanted to admit to someone that you 'cheated' on your boyfriend, your handler, with a man to whom you were engaged? And I was your safest bet."

Sydney looked at her mother. "I don't know why I came here. I just knew that if someone could understand what I was going through, it would be you. You understand this whole weird double soul mate thing that is controlling my dream. I thought maybe you would know how to stop it."

"Sydney. Can't you see the answer?"

"No. I've tried, but I have no idea how to straighten out my life."

"It's simple. Just pick one of the men."

Sydney glared at Irina. "You think that's simple?"

"No. I know it's not simple." Irina stood up from the cot and walked over to the glass. "Which is why I'm going to urge you to follow your heart. Do what your heart's telling you. It won't steer you wrong. You might find yourself in a hard position, but at least you'll be happy."

"Where is all this coming from?" She couldn't help but be shocked at her mother's kind and considerate words.

"You forget that I had to make a difficult choice between two men once." Sydney shook her head in confusion and looked down at her feet. "I had to chose between Alexander Khasinau and your father."

Sydney glanced up at her mother and realized that she was crying.

"I didn't listen to my heart, Sydney. And look where I am. In a prison cell labeled as an enemy of the state."

Sydney put her hand up against the glass in the only show of understanding and sympathy that she could manage. Her mother placed her hand up against the glass in the same spot. They sat there for a moment just looking at one another before Sydney's beeper went off.

Sighing, she turned to her mother. "It's Sloane. He must have heard that I was back from vacation. Looks like he has yet another mission for me." She was almost completely out of sight before she turned back to her mother and called, "Thank you, Mom."


	12. The Real Deal

Sitting in the briefing room of SD-6, surrounded by Sloane, Marshall, and Dixon, Sydney found herself doing the one thing she had been trying not to do all morning. Daydream about either one of the men who were suddenly so available in her life. She tried to push those unwanted thoughts out of her head and focus on Sloane, who was currently pacing at the front of the table.

"Sydney, I'm going to send you on this one alone. You'll be going to a techno club in St. Petersburg. There's a cell of the Covenant in the third sub-basement. I need you to get down there and hack into their system. I want to know if they were responsible for what happened in Zaire. Marshall will give you the op tech later."

Sydney tried to process the information Sloane had just given her, but all she could keep thinking of was her destination. St. Petersburg was the last place on earth she wanted to go.

Realizing the briefing had ended and everyone was filing out of the room, she tried to cover her distractedness. It didn't go fully without notice though.

"Are you all right, Syd?" Dixon asked as they left the room. "If you're concerned about not having backup on this mission, I can go tell Sloane that I should be put on it with you."

  
"No, Dixon," she said with a smile. "It's your sister's birthday. Go have fun and eat lots of cake for me."

Dixon nodded and walked off to talk to Marshall about the op tech for her mission. When no one was looking, Sydney threw herself down into her desk chair and put her head in her hands. She had no idea what she was going to do about this situation.

~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ 

One paper bag and a Joey's Pizza call later, she found herself face to face with one of the men she loved. And he wasn't saying anything she wanted to hear.

"You're coming with me to St. Petersburg?" she asked just to make sure she was clear about that fact.

"Yes. Kendall ordered it an hour ago."

"Isn't that a little dangerous? I mean, I am going on an SD-6 mission, not a CIA."

"Kendall weighed out the pros and cons. He thinks that you're going to need back up on this one. And since SD-6 isn't providing it, we will."

"I can handle this mission by myself." Sydney hoped she sounded convincing and that Vaughn couldn't tell her ulterior motives.

"I know that, Syd. But just trust Kendall on this one. If he thinks you need backup, then maybe you do."

She nodded and sat down on the desk she had been leaning on. "So, when do we leave?"

"In about an hour," he replied as he sat down on the desk next to her, reaching for her hand. Sydney was surprised at how natural this little motion was. It seemed so right for him to just reach across and grasp her hand. She smiled at him.

"What are you so happy about all of the sudden?" he asked her.

"This," she said, squeezing his hand. "It feels nice to just be sitting here with you, not pretending, not debating. Just being."

"It feels right, doesn't it?" He saw her smile beam even brighter. "You know. I didn't really like you at all when you first walked into the CIA. I thought you were this young hotshot agent who didn't really know what they were doing and only wanted to get what they wanted done."

"And I thought you were way too junior an officer to be my handler. You were always telling me what to do, never considering that maybe I knew what was going on a lot better and therefore had a better perspective on the situation."

Vaughn waited a beat and then said, "I still think you're a hotshot."

"Thanks. Thanks a lot."

He smiled at her. "But now I know that you might be a hotshot, but you're damn good at what you do. I've never seen anyone better."

"And obviously you've started to realize that I do know what's going on a lot better than you do."

"Hey!" he mock-yelled.

"It's the truth. I'm sorry if it hurts." Sydney finally couldn't help it. She let out a massive laugh. "We hated each other, didn't we?"

"You know what they say, though. It's usually the one you hate that you end up falling in love with."

Sydney didn't really know what to say to that comment. At this point in her confusion, she didn't really want the complication of Vaughn admitting that he loved her. And she also didn't want to have the conversation steered in the direction of Sark being one of the hated men in her life that she had fallen in love with. Granted, she didn't remember falling in love that well, but it still happened.

She took the coward's way out and changed the subject. "I went to see my mother again," she stated matter-of-factly.

Vaughn didn't comment on the abrupt subject change, and she thanked him silently for that. "Really? How did that go?"

"She actually opened up to me. It was actually kind of normal, if you look past the whole fact that she was in a prison cell. She told me she thought that I had to make a difficult decision to make these dreams go away. I don't know if I can believe her though."

"As much as I'm not a fan of your mother, she might be telling you the truth."

"But she's lied to me so many times before." Sydney looked over at him. "She lied to me about not knowing where I was in the past two years. She knew. Sark told her, and she knew."

Vaughn stared at her in shock. "How did she manage to find out when we didn't even know?"

"Because it seems, for whatever reason, that I wanted her to know where I was. And I wouldn't be surprised if my father had known where I was, too."

"Jack searched for you like crazy when you disappeared."

"For how long?"

Vaughn scrunched his face up in concentration. After a few moments, a look of dawning came over him. "For only the first three months. Then he seemed to pull off a little bit. You know, at the time I didn't think anything of it. But that was so uncharacteristic of your father."

"I must have gotten into contact with him by that time. That would probably have been the only reason he would have lightened up the search for me."

He squeezed her hand lightly. "We can sort this out later. Right now, we need to get going, Syd." He handed her an earpiece. "We had the tech guys make this up to fit your ear perfectly. No one will notice it being there at all. Put it in when we split up in St. Petersburg. You and I won't be able to see each other until after the mission is complete, so the ear piece will be the only communication we'll have after you leave my side. Kendall has us taking two separate plans for security reasons."

She nodded and stood up. "I'll see you in Russia, then." She leaned over and kissed him.

When she pulled back, she saw a look of worry in Vaughn's face. "What's wrong?"

"Why did that seem like a goodbye kiss?"

"Because it was, silly," she said with a laugh.

"No, I mean a more final kiss than that."

That comment made her pale. She had no idea why that kiss had been any different than the ones they shared before. But he was right. It had seemed a little more final than normal. Was her subconscious trying to tell her something?

"Don't blow it out of proportion," she teased. "I'll see you in St. Petersburg."

~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ 

The techno music was blaring in her eardrums, but Sydney was trying to do her best to pretend like she loved it. On a positive note, at least she was wearing a knee-length dress instead of the tight little mini-skirts Sloane tended to have her put in. And she was walking hand in hand with the one man she thought she'd never be able to go out in public with.

"This is strange," he said, leaning in close to whisper in her ear.

"I know. You, me, together on a mission."

He laughed. "No. I mean this weird techno club."

Sydney smiled. Her smile wiped off as she recognized a man from across the room. He was looking right at them waving and shouting something.

"Vaughn, do you know that man?" she asked.

"He looks familiar," Vaughn answered after zeroing in on who she was referring to. "Maybe I worked with him on some assignment a few years back."

"But that's Sergei Ramanonov. He was one of my mother's best agents when she was in hiding under the Alias of the man. You should never have met him in your dealings with the CIA. His picture was classified Omega-17 during that whole prophecy scare. The only reason I know him is because of some intel my mother gave us a few weeks ago that caused Kendall to insist I get familiar with his face. Obviously, he had a hunch we'd run into Ramanonov."

She noticed Vaughn's face pale at her slight accusation. "Listen," he said, "I don't know how I recognize that man. We can figure that out later. But for now we need to focus on this mission. Give me ten minutes, and I'll be in place and you can activate your ear piece."

Sydney let him get away with the blatant subject change, filing it away to be discussed later when they weren't on a mission in Russia. Vaughn kissed her softly on the top of the head and began to walk away, presumably to the van outside that was acting as their base of operations.

Working her way onto the crowded dance floor, she couldn't shake the image of Vaughn's face paling out of her mind. Why was he so upset that she knew who that man was? Deciding that she wouldn't be able to focus on the mission properly without knowing, she pushed her way through the crowd intending to get to the van and ask him right then.

She subtly passed by the line of vision of Ramanonov's table, and what she saw made her stop in her tracks and hide behind a pillar. Vaughn was at the table talking with Ramanonov like they were acquaintances, like they actually knew each other. She couldn't understand what he was doing. He had said he was going back to the van. Why would he lie?

"This is not what I should be doing," she said to herself. "Not when I have a mission to concentrate on." With all her heart, she wanted to forget the mission and go demand Vaughn tell her what was going on. But in the back of her head, she knew the mission and what she was fitting for was ten times as great as her measly feelings. She would have to ignore Vaughn's bizarre actions for the time being.

She made her way to the bathroom and took a quick few breaths. After a few minutes of calming, she decided not to worry about this strange Vaughn/Ramanonov thing and just move on with the mission. Vaughn would have a perfectly legitimate explanation for her when she finally got around to asking him, she was sure of it.

She straightened the hemline and prepared to work her way down to the subbasement levels.

"Are you there, Vaughn?" she asked into her activated earpiece.

"Hanging on your every word," came the answer from her earpiece.

"Good. I have to go radio silent for a few minutes, just until I get into the subbasement."

"Acknowledged. Don't take too long."

"I'll try not to," she replied with a smile. "I want to have time to talk to you." Realizing he might take that as an odd statement to make in this situation, she added, "There's too much of St. Petersburg that I want to discretely see with you, to much I want to talk with you about."

She clicked her earpiece off before he could answer and made her way down a back hallway. Instead of turning into the bathroom hallway, she kept going. She prayed that she wouldn't run into anyone and have to use her patented drunk Southerner tactic to get out of it.

Within minutes she located the correct room but was frustrated to realize she had forgotten to figure out a way to get past the security locks. She was about to turn her earpiece back on and ask Vaughn for suggestions as to what to do when an arm reached around from behind her to swipe a key card through the lock.

  
"Allow me, Sydney," said an extremely familiar voice.

  
"I should have known you'd be here, Sark," she said without turning around to look at him.

"You ran out rather abruptly the other night. What made you cut your vacation time so short?"

She finally looked back at him as he gently put his hand to the small of her back and guided her into the now unlocked room. "I got a little scared," she admitted.

"Was it because of your dreams?"

She stared at him in surprise for a moment, forgetting that she had explained her problem to him earlier. "It was something I said in one of my dreams, yes. And the fact that I'm haunted by St. Petersburg."

"I think it's a little fitting," Sark said as he sat down at the computer. "I mean, you and me, reunited in the same place that you named our home for."

Sydney didn't respond to that comment. "Do me a favor, and don't say anything, don't move for a few seconds." She clicked her earpiece back on. "Vaughn. It isn't really secure enough for me to talk down here. I'm going to go radio silent until I get back up into the main club."

When she had heard Vaughn's affirmation, she clicked her earpiece off again and turned her attention back to Sark. He was sitting in the chair, smirking at her. "What?" she asked innocently.

"Your handler's here, too?" he said with a devilish grin. "This could be fun." Sark popped a disk out of the computer's drive, put another one in, and continued to type without losing his smirk.

"You thrive on trouble, don't you?"

He glanced up at her. "Yes, I do," he answered simply while turning back towards the computer screen. "And you know that."

Sydney glared at the back of his head. "The Covenant had nothing to do with the explosion at SD-6's facility in Zaire," he said while popping the second disk out of the computer's drive. "Here's some proof you can take back to Sloane."

Sydney reached out and took the disk. "What was on that second disk?"

"Nothing you need to be concerned with, love. It's the reason why I happened to be here. And that's all you really need to know."

Sydney accepted that short, general explanation and moved on to her next question. "And how did you know what my assignment was in the first place?"

"I have my ways of keeping tabs on you."

"Thank you," she said as she went to leave the room.

"Oh, Syd?" Sark called, causing her to turn back towards him. "You know that you're going to have to make a decision soon."

"Everyone keeps saying that."

"I can wait forever, but not if you're with another man."

"I know." She gave him a weak smile as the door swung shut behind her.

She went to start running down the hallway and away from the scene of the crime as fast as she could. But she didn't get far before she heard someone call her name from down the other end of the hallway.

"Vaughn!" she yelled when she saw who it was. "What are you doing down here?"

"The CIA got intel that Sark was going to be breaking into this cell, too, tonight. Your earpiece was off, but I really thought you should know. So I came down here."

Sydney cringed as she heard a voice from the doorway she had just exited. "That wasn't necessary, Mr. Vaughn. Agent Bristow and I have already run into each other."

Vaughn looked back and forth from Sydney to Sark in confusion. Before either one of the three could say anything else, a massive alarm started ringing through the corridor. Sydney grabbed both of the men by the arms and began to drag them down the corridor. They both followed silently sending glares the other man's way.

When Sydney had gotten them effectively lost in the exiting techno crowd's path and out of the club entirely, she pushed them over to a small alley. Vaughn was the first one to comment. "I just have one question. If you two had already run into each other, why is he not nursing some wounds?"

"Because sometimes you don't need violence to get what you want, Mr. Vaughn," Sark answered. "Sydney and I have an unspoken mutual agreement. She doesn't get in my way, I don't get in hers."

Vaughn looked over at Sydney to see if she was admitting this. "He wasn't looking for the same intel I was. It was just easier to let him get his and mine."

"You let him get your mission objective?" Vaughn threw his hands up in the air in exasperation. "I can't believe this. What the hell is going on with you, Sydney?"

"I don't know," she screamed back. "You both know I have no fucking idea what's going on with me right now. I'm trying to figure it out as soon as I can."

"How do you know the information he gave you is correct?" Vaughn asked. He tried to calm his voice as much as he could since Sydney was getting upset.

"I trust him," she admitted. "I don't know why. But I do. Now I'd love to stay here chatting about this all day, but the CIA does not want to see you and me with Sark, Vaughn. We need to get out of here."

Vaughn grabbed Sydney's arm. "Yeah, let's go. You can explain this more later."

Sark watched as Vaughn and Sydney ran away from him. He had never liked Michael Vaughn, a man he judged to be incapable of handling Sydney or protecting her the way she needed to be. And seeing her leave hand in hand with him made him want to go out and kill someone.

~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ 

The original plan was for Vaughn to drop her off at the Arbat-Nord Hotel and then come back in an hour to check into his own room. But seeing Sark by her side on the mission had changed all that. Together, he and Sydney walked into the hotel. She waited while he checked into a room that they made sure was on a different floor and in a different wing than hers.

She followed him without a word to Room 236 and immediately sat on the bed. After throwing down his bags, he leaned up against the dresser and the two of them just stared at each other.

"I don't know where to begin," he said

"I told you before. These dreams are really screwing up my mind. My intuitions are off. I can't focus on what's real." It was at that point that she finally noticed that he didn't really seem to believe what she was saying. "You don't believe me, do you?"

"You can't blame everything on your dreams, Syd. Part of what's going on is what you're feeling in the here and now. You wouldn't change your convictions just because of a few dreams you've had. Something's going on between you and Sark. It's plain as day. Anyone could see it."

"Nothing is going on between us, I swear." She could feel tears welling up in her eyes.

"You're lying to me. I know you too well to let you get away with that. Just tell me the truth. You love him, don't you? Sometime in the past few weeks, something changed between you."

"Yes, I will admit that something did change. He's become my friend, Michael. I've started to actually understand who he really is, where he came from. He's gone through a lot of the emotions I had growing up. I can relate to him."

"And you can't relate to me because I wasn't raised in a world of evil spies?"

"Do not blow this out of proportion," she warned.

"Out of proportion! Sydney, you're in love with the coldest son of a bitch in this world."

"I don't love him," she said. "I don't."

"Keep trying to convince yourself. I've seen the way you look at him and the way he looks at you. I lied to you back in the club."

Sydney almost gasped as she realized he was about to admit the reason he hadn't gone straight back to the CIA van. She thought she was going to have to go through a painful confrontation to get the information out of him.

"I was in that hallway for a good couple minutes before you left the room. I saw you two together in that room. I saw the way you acted around him."

Sydney looked up at him completely furious. Half her anger came from his disclosing the wrong lie and the other for the fact that he had lied to her. "You lied to me. For what reason?"

"Because I wanted to see if you trusted me enough to tell me that you ran into him."

"You should know by now that I don't like to play games." Sydney took a deep breath and continued. "And if brutal honesty is what you expect of me, then I want the same from you. What were you doing talking to Ramanonov tonight when you said you were going back to get into position?"

"Don't try to change the subject."

"I'm not. I just want you to answer the questions, and then we'll go back to talking about Sark. We need to talk about him, I know that. But there's something else I need to get out first and that's the issue of Ramanonov. I don't want to have this tension and lying between us anymore. So just answer my question."

"I worked with Sergei Ramanonov before you turned yourself in to the CIA. I was a double agent for your mother and for the CIA."

She looked at him in confusion. "I don't understand that at all."

"Your mother killed my father. I didn't know that at the time. All I knew was that whoever the Man was, he had some connection with the death of my father. So I offered my services for a long-term undercover assignment in that organization. I was working under Ramanonov for over six months before my cover got blown, and I had to return to the CIA."

"So that's the only reason that Ramanonov knew who you were?"

"That's the only reason. And I swear to you, Sydney, I wasn't there long enough to know that the Man was actually Irina Derevko. Your mother."

"I believe you, but you're still holding something back," she commented. "Don't."

"Fine. I wasn't going to tell you because I thought it would hurt you too much to know. But I guess if I'm asking you to be completely honest, I should be the same. Back when you were only working for SD-6, I was present in a facility in Beijing, China. You were on an assignment to retrieve some artifact for Sloane, and the beginnings of your mother's organization caught you. I was working with them at the time."

"You were there when I was kidnapped," she said, understanding dawning on her face. "I had a dream that you were there when I was being tortured."

"I didn't know who you were at the time. I didn't even put the two things together until you had been working with the CIA and me for a month. And then, it didn't seem wise to tell you. I mean, you were such a loose cannon in the beginning. I was afraid."

"That's a lot to process," she admitted. "But thank you for being honest."

"And I ask the same of you. I had a good reason for working with the enemy. What's yours?"

Sydney felt herself stiffen slightly at his harsh words. She thought their conversation had reached a safer level when he was telling her about his deep cover assignment, but now they were back to the same tense atmosphere.

Vaughn sighed loudly. "I've seen the change in you since you spent that week with him, Sydney. You're not the same. I don't know what exactly is different, and if maybe I'm only seeing the effects your dreams have been having on you. But my heart tells me that in the end, it has nothing to do with your dreams. At least not directly. My heart keeps telling me that you love him."

"I don't. I don't. I don't," she yelled, covering her head with her hands.

"Are you trying to convince me or are you trying to convince yourself?" he asked.

Sydney talked through her hands and her tears. "I wish I could erase everything that went on that week I was gone. Every last bit of what occurred between Sark and I. What can I do to make you believe that?"

Vaughn's voice shifted from anger to a cold, distant tone she had never heard come from him before. "Did you sleep with him?" She looked up at him in horror, realizing that she might have said just a little bit too much. "Did you?"

"Yes," she admitted.

They stared at each other in silence for a few moments, Vaughn with the cold look still on his face and Sydney with tears streaming down her cheek. Finally, he stood up and walked over to sit next to her on the bed. She felt his arms wrap around her shoulders before she could even process that he had moved.

"Listen, Sydney. You might not want to hear it, but I love you. I love you like I've never loved anyone before. And I don't care how long it takes for you to straighten things out with yourself. I'm not leaving your side."

"Thank you," she whispered. Taking a deep breath, she stood up, shrugging off his arm. "That means a lot right now. I think that you and I should cool our heads a little before we keep talking about this." She gave him a weak smile, which he returned.

She opened the hotel room door and paused as she was about to step through the doorway. "This isn't goodbye. At least not for me."

"Me, either," Vaughn said from the bed. "You need to get some rest, Syd."

Sydney nodded her head and began to make her way to Room 403. The whole way she cursed Sark silently. She couldn't believe how he had almost single handedly destroyed her whole life. How could a man who claimed to care for her so much do something so hurtful?

If he had been in front of her that moment, she wouldn't have hesitated to punch him. She was happy to get a little reminder of how insensitive he could be. He had begun to get her to believe that he had actually changed. But the stunt he pulled and the way he treated Vaughn had made her doubt that.

Still trying to concentrate hard enough to keep from crying any more, she slammed her hotel room door a little louder than was necessary and hoped that no one would complain. She was supposed to be keeping a low profile, and the fact that she had just had a rather large, noisy fight with her handler and boyfriend hadn't really started her off on the right foot.

It wasn't surprising to her when she started pacing back and forth across the floor of the room. She was so mad at both Sark and Vaughn. This situation wasn't entirely either one's fault. It was both of their faults and hers.

She wanted to scream as the thought of Sark being so caring and kind to her kept creeping back into her mind. He had given her a considerable amount of help tonight in locating her mission objective. The words he exchanged with Vaughn were pretty snarky and cocky, but there wasn't anything out of the ordinary in that.

The memory of him saying he would wait for her forever crept into her head. She screamed in frustration and hit the wall forcefully. The only thing that accomplished was she knew she was still alive by the massive pain running up and down her right arm. She looked at the wall and saw a nail protruding out of it. There was a substantial gash up her right hand and arm.

Not caring to change out of her mission attire and cursing her stupidity, she flung herself on the bed. The tears came back as soon as she let her concentration slip and slowly drifted off.

~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ 

She found herself standing in the hallway that had been missing from her dreams for a long time. Why she was back to this starting point, she had no idea. Deciding she might as well get this over with, she tried the dark blue door.

It was locked.

Sighing, she figured she had chosen the wrong one. She couldn't even remember whose turn it was to play with her mind. The black door was only a little walk off, and she stood in front of it within seconds.

It was locked, too.

"What's going on?" she yelled to whomever was listening.

She wasn't surprised when her mother appeared beside her. "So, what are you trying to tell me now, Subconscious?"

"It's simple. You need to make a decision." Irina looked at her daughter in concern. "And you need to do it now before you lose them both."

Sydney didn't even have time to ask a question or even say a word. She felt her body get sucked back down the hallway. Helplessly, she watched scenes and objects from her previous dreams whip by her head. She was spinning out of control. And she had no idea how to stop.


	13. Vaughn

****

Author's note: I've decided that I want to let each one of you make your choice on who Sydney should pick. So I wrote out three different endings with corresponding headings. Personally, I would pick the Sark ending, but that's just me! ;) I hope you enjoy!

Sydney sat up with a start. Her lungs were struggling for air, and she felt as if she had almost drowned. She was drenched in sweat for head to toe. Sighing loudly, she leaned over to check the time.

"It's 5:29 in the morning in St. Petersburg. And I'm scared because I've had a nightmare," she said to herself. "The silliest nightmare in the world that wasn't scary at all. And yet I'm more upset by it than any of my previous dreams. How's that for karma?"

The normal reaction, the reaction she would have had on any other day, would be to reach for the phone and call Vaughn. He always was there to pick her up whenever she managed to fall. But something had changed between them earlier that night. And she no longer was sure if he was the one to turn to for support, if he would be willing to offer her that support.

She dropped the clock out of her hand as that thought raced through her head. The world must be ending if she actually believed that Michael Vaughn wouldn't be there when she needed him. He was the kind of guy who would be there for her even if he hated her more than any other person on this earth.

She pulled herself out of bed and slid out of the dress she was still in while walking over to her suitcase. "Gotcha!" she exclaimed as she found the pair of sweatpants she had packed. Her excitement went away quickly when she remembered what sweatpants they were.

They were Vaughn's. Two sizes two big with the Kings logo wearing off from too many washings, she had fallen in love with them and stolen them four weeks earlier. They had quickly become her favorite piece of clothing, only because he cherished them so much. And they personified everything about him that she loved the most.

She pulled them on and rifled through her suitcase for a sports bra which she promptly put on too. Sighing she looked at her appearance in the mirror. She was supporting some major bed hair and her makeup from the mission earlier that day hadn't been properly wiped off.

"You are one piece of work, Sydney Bristow," she said to her reflection. "Moping around a Russian hotel room in clothes you've stolen from a man who might never want to talk to you again."

Thinking about the magnitude of what had happened, she felt the tears begin to fall down her cheeks again. She knew that she had hurt him so much. If he had told her that he had slept with Anna Espinosa, she knew she would have been crushed. So betrayed that she probably never would have wanted to talk to him again, let alone see him at dawn in a Russian hotel.

"Especially not looking like this," she muttered as she made her way to the bathroom to try to scrub off the now running mascara and leftover make-up.

The worst thing that Michael Vaughn had ever done to her was three years earlier when he tried to blackmail her to turn her father into the CIA as a KGB spy. And he didn't even go through with that. Then, there was this whole undercover assignment. It was just like Vaughn to try to give up his whole life to find answers. How many times had he risked his job and his neck to assist Sydney in her search for the truth about every single aspect of her life? He was completely selfless.

And she? She couldn't have been more selfish. Forgetting everything she had spent years fighting to have, she had let her body take over for her mind. She had lived in a moment that she had never wanted, never dreamed about, never wished for. That little indiscretion had the power to ruin her whole life. That one slip in judgment could ruin the best thing she'd ever known.

She had slept with the one man Vaughn despised more than anything, and he still had the decency to say that he loved her and wouldn't leave her side, no matter how long it took her to work this dream junk out. That was classic Michael Vaughn, something that would never change.

"If that's not a sign, I don't know what is." She smoothed her hair back into a ponytail and wiped the tears from her eyes. Smiling bravely, she nodded to her reflection.

For the first time ever, the knowledge that she was breaking about a hundred and one different CIA protocols didn't bother her in the slightest. She made her way down one floor and across to the other wing, ending up in front of the door to Room 236. The most logical thing would have been to knock and wait for his answer. Well, at least hope that he answered when he saw her image through the peephole. But she couldn't get herself to pick up her hand and make contact with the door. It was just too hard to do.

"What do I tell him?" she mumbled. "I slept with Sark, but it was a huge mistake. Please don't hold it against me?" She shook her head in disgust. "That's horrible."

"My mother told me I had two soul mates and I would have to pick between them. Congratulations! I picked you." She stuck her tongue out. "So lame!"

"Can we just forget about what happened?" She threw her hands up in the air and started pacing. "Never going to happen."

"I'll forgive you if you forgive me." She rolled her eyes. "What am I, in fifth grade?"

"You're the only man who has put up with my phone calls at midnight, crazy rants, and the unending list of psychotic family members." She sighed. "That's the truth, but why remind him of all my faults?"

The sound of a lock being turned made her stop the pacing and turn around. Vaughn's sleepy figure was silhouetted in the moonlight streaming in from his hotel room windows. "What are you doing out here at five in the morning, Syd?"

Seeing his face and knowing that he probably was too asleep to remember what had gone on, she burst into tears. "I love you," she managed to spit out between soft sobs.

After a minute, she got control of herself and looked up at him. He hadn't moved. His face looked so shocked that she didn't know what to do. He took a step back and held the door open for her to enter without saying a word or looking her in the eyes. She did that, choosing also to stay silent, and sat down on the bed. She couldn't help but think about the fact that seven hours earlier she had been having the worst fight of her life right here in that same position.

True to form, he took up his spot leaning on the dresser and continued to stare at her in shock. She could see him try to formulate something to say, and finally, he found the words he had been searching for. "Did you just tell me that you loved me?"

"Yes," she said. "I know that it's probably coming at the worst time when you hate even the sight of me. After what I've done, I don't think I'd ever want to see me again. But I couldn't hold it in, not now that I realize it's true. I've known probably since that moment you told me about your father's watch and how it stopped on the day we met. I was foolish not to tell you before, and I'm sorry. I was just scared of all the hurdles we would have to get around, and I didn't want to cause you any more stress. God knows how much I've ruined your life already. So, you see, that's why I never admitted it, to you or to myself. I thought it was best. But now I'm just thinking about all the time I wasted in not telling you." She looked up into his eyes. "And that's why I'm here."

Deciding that she was finished with her rant, Vaughn sat down on the bed beside her. "You know that you shouldn't have come here, don't you, Syd?"

"Screw protocol," she hissed. "I'm tired of the damn CIA or SD-6 or the Covenant or my mother or Sark getting in between us. This is where I want to be, so here I am." She looked up at him sincerely as a thought dawned on her. "But if you don't want me here, I will leave. Just say the word, and I'm out the door. Kendall can assign me to a new handler, and you might actually have a chance at a normal life without a crazy spy controlling it."

"I would never tell you to leave," he said with a small smile.

"I know. You're a world-famous pep talker. I learned that within days of meeting you. Always there to pick me up when my life becomes too depressing, which is quite often. You should have been a psychologist or therapist instead of a CIA handler. You missed your calling."

"Thanks. But that's not what I meant. I meant that I would never tell you, Sydney Bristow, to leave because every second I spend with you is the happiest second of my life. And not only that, but you happen to be wearing my favorite sweatpants. Sweatpants you told me I must have left at that hotel room in Quebec. Liar." He looked at her seriously. "I would never kick those sweatpants out."

She laughed. "Good. Because I'm never taking them off."

He ran a finger up her arm and cradled her neck in his hand. "Are you sure about that?" he asked suggestively.

She threw herself into his arms, effectively tackling him to the bed. "I'm so so sorry about all of this."

"I was wondering when you'd come around." He grinned at her. "And you know what I say?"

"What?" she asked.

  
"I saw screw protocol, too. Stay here with me until morning. We can go back to the normal hiding tomorrow. For now, let's just be together."

She nodded and snuggled in close to his side. They laid in silence until he heard her laugh.

"What's so funny?"

"I just realized what you were trying to do, Michael Vaughn. And it's not going to work."

"What do you mean?" he asked suddenly getting very somber. He thought she had worked out her mixed up daydreams and thoughts, but it seemed like she was implying that she was having doubts.

She looked up at him seriously, but soon cracked up with a smile. "You are so not getting these sweatpants. No way!"

Dropping his mouth in shock and pushing his silly doubts out of his mind, he tickled her side until she squealed for him to stop. As she tried to catch her breath, Sydney finally realized something. "You know this is what love really is. I love you, Michael Vaughn. You are my soul mate."

"Was there ever a real doubt?" he asked, as she shook her head no.

"Not a one."

"Would you do me a favor, Syd?"

"What?"

"Call up Sloane and tell him that you are going to be delayed in St. Petersburg."

She nodded in agreement because she recognized all the forgiving and understanding he had done for her in the past twenty-four hours. It was the least she could do. She reached for her SD-6 phone and called the office. One of the perks of being a spy was she really didn't have to give too elaborate of a reason for the delay. That would come when she returned.

Turning to face Vaughn, she asked, "So why did I do that?"

She didn't get an answer because he was also on the phone. Managing to pick up the end of the conversation, she realized that he had called the CIA office to say that they were going to be delayed. "What is going on?" she asked.

"I want you to come somewhere with me."

"Vaughn, you know that we can't just parade ourselves around together. We still need to follow a strict code of discretion."  


"I want you to come to Vegas with me," he said, standing up and pulling on a pair of shoes.

"Las Vegas? Now?"

"Right now. Right this moment."

"Why?" she asked hesitantly.

"Because that's the easiest place for us to make it there and back to Los Angeles before too long a time has past," he said secretively.

Vaughn grabbed her hand and started pulling her out the door. "Why are we going to Vegas?"

"Because I want you to marry me, Syd. I want you to marry me right this second. I can't stand not having you in my life all the time."

"But our work…"

"The CIA can come up with some cover story somehow. We're so close to bringing down SD-6. It's a matter of weeks, days even. I think that, worse comes to it, we can keep our marriage a secret for a few weeks."

Sydney stopped in her tracks in the middle of the hallway and dropped his hand. "You're serious about this, aren't you?"

"I've never been more sure of anything in my life. I don't care what's happened in the past between us or any members of our family. I want you in my life, and I won't take no for an answer."

She smiled and slipped her hand back into his. "Who said I was saying no?"

"Good." He leaned in and gave her a quick kiss before they started moving again.

When they had reached the outside, Vaughn hailed a cab and told him to drive them to the airport. They snuggled in close to one another in the back seat, letting the whole idea of what they were about to do sink in completely.

"Sydney Vaughn has a nice ring to it," she said finally.

"I like the sound of it, that's for sure."

They sat in a calm silence for a few more blocks before Sydney began to talk again. "I love you."

"I love you, too, Syd. I always will."

After a moment, she added, "But you know you're still not getting your sweatpants back."

"I've got years to work on you. I'm not worried." He leaned down at kissed her lightly on the top of the head. "Lots and lots of years."


	14. Sydney

Sydney woke up groggily. She tried to concentrate on focusing her eyes, but quickly realized that it wasn't working. The events of the previous night came flooding back into her head. However, the fact that her waking was similar to the way she woke when she had been drugged wasn't fitting in with the timeline she remembered. There were no drugs involved the night before. A lot of yelling and cursing, lies and deceit. But no drugs.

Again, she tried to focus her eyes, and this time she had a little more success. She was no longer in her hotel room. The clothes on her body were not the black dress, but instead ugly grey sweats. The walls weren't an inviting light blue color, but stark, horribly dingy white. She tried to sit up and realized that she was strapped down to a metal bed.

"This all plays into the typical drugged and kidnapped theory," she thought to herself, "but how did someone get me out of the hotel without Vaughn noticing?"

The memories of their fight the night before came flooding back, and she realized that he probably hadn't been that concerned with her well being. Pushing that terrible thought to the side, she tried to figure out a way to get her arms free of their restraints. There was nothing sharp around, and she couldn't maneuver her hands up to the buckles.

Eventually, she got frustrated and just tried to muscle her way out of the bed.

"Miss Bristow!" said a voice from the doorway. "When are you going to stop struggling? It's been three days now since we put you in restraints. You need to get used to them, honey!"

Sydney took in the lady's appearance. The woman looked vaguely familiar, but only in a she-was-once-my-waitress or standing-next-to-you-in-line kind of way. She was dressed in a white uniform and was carrying a tray of pills.

"Who the hell are you?" Sydney screamed. "What the hell have you done to me? Where's Vaughn?"

"Oh, not that Vaughn man again." The lady shook her head. "Now, Sydney, you know you aren't allowed to talk about him. Especially because today you have visitors."

"Visitors?" This woman, this situation, were becoming way too confusing.

"Yes. Don't you remember the doctor telling you yesterday that your parents were coming up to visit you?"

"Doctor?" she asked. Then, she realized what the woman had just said. "My parents are coming to see me? Both of them? Together? Impossible."

"And why is that so impossible, Sydney?" the woman asked as she put a container of pills on the nightstand by Sydney's head.

"Because my father hates my mother's guts and would probably kill her on the spot if the US government didn't already have her in their custody. And would you quit saying my name in every other sentence?"

"Keep your voice down, Sydney. Dr. Malarkey says that it's not good for you to yell." The woman smiled at her and left the room.

"What the hell is going on?" Sydney screamed after her. "Tell me what is happening."

Sydney found herself alone again and still chained to the bed. She had no idea where she was and who would want her in their possession. It was still bothering her that she didn't know where Vaughn was and why the woman told her she wasn't allowed to talk to him.

After a few minutes, she gave up struggling with the straps. If she were going to get out of her alive, she would need to save up her energy so that meant just sitting back and waiting for the right opportunity.

That opportunity came rather quickly, but instead of seizing it, Sydney was left more confused. The door had opened, and the woman came in with two people in tow.

Sydney managed to spit out two words. "Mom? Dad?"

"We're right here, Sydney," her father said, smiling at her. He turned to the woman. "How is she doing today, Nurse Hathaway?"

"She had a little momentary lapse. She started talking about Michael Vaughn. And she was insisting that you were in government custody, Mrs. Bristow."

Sydney watched as her mother nodded and walked over to her bedside. "Sydney, darling, I'm not in a prison cell. I've never committed a crime. Honey, you need to start separating your dreams from reality."

"What is going on?" she asked while her mother gently stroked the side of her face. "Why are you doing this to me?"

"It's for you own good," Jack said. "You've been having these dreams for weeks now. You needed help."

"My dreams were harmless, Dad. I talked to you about them, Mom. You said that all I had to do was make a choice. I was going to make my choice today in St. Petersburg. I swear that I was. Why did you put me in here?"

"You've been in here for a week," the nurse informed her. "You can't have been in Russia yesterday. Try to focus and you'll remember."

Sydney humored the woman and tried to focus on where she had been the past day. In her mind, she remembered every single event that happened in Russia, her time with Sark at their house, all the haunting dreams she had had. But in the back of her mind, she also had memories of being in this bed, of this nurse coming in to check on her every hour, of begging her parents not to do this and that they could sort this out by themselves.

"What is going on?" she asked for the millionth time, tears in her eyes. "Why am I here?"

"The doctor said the effects of the drugs on her system might cause memory loss and they may even worsen her hallucinations," the nurse informed Jack and Irina.

Jack nodded and walked over to Sydney's bedside. "Sydney, you've been having horrible dreams for weeks now. Dreams of a life that doesn't exist."

"You keep talking about the CIA, sweetheart," Irina added. "That you're an agent there and for an evil organization called SD-6."

Jack jumped in. "But you're not, Sydney. You were a banker at the Credit Dauphine building downtown. You've worked there under Arvin Sloane for years. You go on frequent business trips for him."

"Credit Dauphine is a front to cover up SD-6's real activities. You know that, Dad. You work there with me, too. You're a double agent just like me."

"Sydney, your father sells airplane parts. He's always sold airplane parts."

"And I bet you're an English teacher, aren't you, Irina?"

Her mother sighed. "I don't know what to do, Jack. She refuses to call me by my real name. My name is Laura, Sydney. Laura Bristow. This Irina Derevko alias is a figment of your imagination."

"Just like Michael Vaughn is right?"

Jack smiled at his daughter. "She's coming out of the haze. Yes, Vaughn only exists in your mind. He might be a real person out there somewhere, but you've never met him. You don't have a CIA handler because you've never worked for the CIA."

"I'm sorry. Am I late?"

Sydney turned her head to see who was talking. When she recognized the voice, she almost started crying. "Will!"

Will smiled at her and entered the room. "Did you hear that, Mr. Bristow? She remembers who I am. She must be getting better."

  
"Will, tell them what I do. You know that I work for the CIA. I almost ruined your life because of it."

"Sydney, you and I have been married for the past five years. Nowhere in that time did you ever explain to me that you were an agent of the US government. I know it's hard to fathom, but that whole world is in your mind."

"I'm married to you?"

"Happily married and we have a little girl at home. She can't wait until her mommy comes back from vacation. So you see, Syd, you have to give this whole other life up. If not for my sake or your parents, do it for your daughter's sake."

"What is going on?" she asked. She could feel herself begin to cry and tried to shrug the tears back down. "Where's Francie, then? Is she real?"

Will was the one to finally answer after a few moments of silence. "Syd. Francie was your goldfish when you were five. You accidentally killed her."

Sydney started to laugh and cry at the same time. This whole situation was becoming more and more absurd.

"Don't upset yourself," Jack instructed. "I know that this is a hard concept to get a grasp on. But you're going to have to do just that. We need you to get better."

Sydney paid no attention to him and began to struggle against her bindings once more. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw her mother get a rather nervous, confused face and run out into the hallway calling that she'd get a doctor. When she returned, a man was with her.

That man was Michael Vaughn.

"Vaughn!" she screamed when she saw him. "You have to get me out of here. I don't know what's happened but somehow all the people I love have been brainwashed into thinking that our lives didn't exist. They all told me that you didn't exist."

"Sydney, Sydney, Sydney," Vaughn said as he took a hypodermic needle out of his lab coat pocket. "You tried that one on me yesterday. My name is not Michael Vaughn. I'm Doctor Ken Malarkey, your physician. I'm about to administer a mild sedative. It shouldn't put you to sleep, but it should calm you down a great deal."

"Vaughn. Why are you doing this to me? I apologized for what I did with Sark."

"Oh, not this Sark character again," she heard Will mutter.

"Sark's a real person," she screamed. Or at least she tried to scream. The mild sedative made it come out as more of a whimper than a scream.

"No, he's not," Doctor Vaughn explained. "The man you believe to be this Julian Sark is actually the janitor who cleans your room at night. Every time he comes in here, you try to persuade him to help you escape. He's not an evil free agent. He's not going to help you."

"Sark would always help me if I needed him. You're lying."

"I think we're upsetting here," Irina said to everyone present. "This visit was a mistake. It's too soon. I'm sorry, Will. It looks like you're going to have to raise little Amy by yourself for at least a little while longer. I'm sure Sydney will snap out of this soon."

Will nodded and began walking to the door as Jack put his arm around him. Irina slowly followed while Nurse Hathaway checked her vitals and then left. The only one left in the room was Vaughn.   


"Please tell me that there's some reasonable explanation for all this," she pleaded with him.

"Listen. You're going to have to give up these silly notions if you ever want to have a real life again. I have affection for you, you know that. But I can't make the doctors that lenient. If you stay in this kind of shape, they'll never grant your release. And there's a little girl out there desperate to see her mommy again. So, try to be strong, Sydney. The ones you love need you."

Vaughn got up and went to leave. He could hear Sydney screaming at him that he was wrong, that she wasn't insane, that she lived the life of spy. It almost made him want to cry. He had never met anyone so delusional.

As the door banged shut, he could still hear her screams. All the way down the hall, he could still hear her screams.


	15. Sark

Sydney awoke with the slight sense that something was off. It took her a moment to release that she was still in her hotel room with her mission party dress on. Her whole body felt like it was on fire, though. The heat around her was unbearable.

"What's going on?" she asked groggily.

She got her answer as a man burst through her hotel room door. The sound of splintering wood echoed in her eardrums, but she couldn't seem to comprehend what was going on. And it was at that moment that she realized that the heat wasn't coming from her body. It wasn't just the fact that she had had a bad dream which made her sweaty and hot. There were actual flames all around her.

Looking up at the man, she screamed, "What the hell are you doing here, Sark? And what the hell is going on?"

Sark didn't say a word. He just walked over to the bed and scooped her up in his arms.

"Would you put me down, you big brute?" she yelled.

"Syd, the whole building is on fire if you didn't notice. We need to get you out of here and fast."

She sighed as she realized that he probably wasn't going to put her down anytime soon. "I don't see how carrying me is going to help the situation."

"It's going to help the situation quite a bit actually. Three reasons. Number one, you're not wearing shoes. The ground is either going to be extremely hot or covered in flames. Burning your feet is just not an option."

"My feet can take a little pain. I've been through worse."

He ignored her as he carried her into the hallway. "Number two, I know where the main parts of the fire are. So I know the best way out. If you were to follow me, I would have to be constantly shouting instructions back to you. That leaves the small problem of massive smoke inhalation."

"I'm not some blind little schoolgirl. I know how to successfully get myself out of a burning building. I've done it multiple times. In Kabul. Orlando. Copenhagen. Kinshasa. And those are only off the top of my head. So don't give me that bullshit as an excuse."

"Would you stop fighting with me for once, Sydney? I am not going to put you down, and that's the end of this discussion."

Sydney glared at him for a minute, but finally admitted defeat. She managed to stay silent for a few seconds as he rushed down the hallway and turned right. "I'm curious. What was your third reason as to the necessity of this?"

"You want to know number three, huh?" he said with a smirk.

"Yes. Tell me before I start arguing with you again. I only have so much self-control, and I'm about maxed out for the night."

"I kind of enjoy carrying you."

"Figures. The whole building's on fire, and you still find a way to flirt with me."

"Enough talk. Remember number two."

Sydney bit her lip and tried to relinquish control of the situation completely to Sark. In the back of her mind, she was floored by the fact that this was so easy to do. One month earlier, you couldn't have forced her on pain of death to turn everything over to him. Things had changed so fast for her.

She pushed her head into his shoulders as the heat started to increase and make her face painfully tingly. They seemed to be walking towards the worst part of the fire. That made her a little nervous, but she just kept repeating over and over in her head that the only way to get out of this was to let Sark have her trust. It was just something she was going to have to make herself do.

Sark carried her all the way into the stairwell before putting her down. "There shouldn't be that many hot spots from now on. The fire was started on your floor."

"As much as I know it would kill you, we should stop by Vaughn's room and let him know what's going on. The hotel is going to be evacuated soon, I suppose. He's going to want to know that I made it out safely."

"Vaughn isn't your concern anymore," Sark said distantly.

"What the heck is that supposed to mean?"

"Please, Syd. For once just trust me when I say that Vaughn is not your main concern right now. Your main concern is getting yourself out of that bloody inferno and to a safe place."

"And I'm sure you know a great safe place to take me. Hell, you'll probably tell me that we spent a whole year of our lives there in a quaint little love nest." She noticed that her words seemed to hurt Sark. The expression on his face changed a little. "I'm sorry. That was too harsh even for you."

"You're going to have to trust me. I won't ask anything else of you ever. But I just want you to know that the fire was set with the purpose of killing you. I can't explain it all to you, but I will. When we get you to safety."

Sydney nodded, and Sark took that as a full-on okay. He grabbed her hand and started pulling her down the street. In the back of her head, she remembered thinking that she still wasn't wearing any shoes and the streets were filthy. But her head wasn't what was in charge at the moment. That would be her heart. And her heart was telling her head to shut up and follow this man.

Sark had her running through the streets for a good fifteen minutes before he pulled her into a small alleyway.   
  
"If this were a slasher movie, you would be about to kill me," she babbled.

"Good thing this is just your typical action movie," he said sending her a wink as he pulled open a random door. "Go inside. I'll be there in a minute."

"Don't leave me alone," she begged him, surprised at the very fact that she was begging him. "I'm a little freaked out right now."

He nodded and followed her in the door. "I was just going to call a few colleagues of mine and iron out the situation before I laid the whole thing out for you. But if you're scared, I won't leave you."

"Thank you." Sydney looked around and found herself staring at a nicely furnished apartment. "What is this place?"

"This is one of the safe houses I keep operational for times like these. Make yourself comfortable." He went over to a set of drawers and pulled out a few items of clothing. "You might want to change."

That was when Sydney noticed that her dress had seen better days. There were tears up and down the sides and one whole strap was missing. She turned back to Sark and recognized that he hadn't fair any better. Most of his clothing had smoke stains and burns all over it. The most discouraging part of his appearance was his right forearm. It was burned at least slightly and bleeding rather badly.

Without thinking, Sydney ripped off a section of her dress and walked over to him. "We need to put a little pressure on this to stop the bleeding. How did this happen?"  
  
"I was breaking down the door to your hotel room, and it wasn't most obedient thing I've encounter. Plus there were the huge flames preventing me from even touching the doorknob."

She nodded and pulled the mock bandage tight. When he stiffened noticeably, she flinched. "I'm sorry."

"It's okay, Sydney. It's better that I feel the pain. If I didn't, we might have a lot bigger problem on our hands." He looked into her eyes intently.

"What?" she finally asked, breaking their mutual solemn gaze.

"You were happy, right? When we were together?"

"Sark, you know that I don't remember the two years we spent together. I can't answer that question."

"No, Sydney. Not the two years we spent together. The week we spent together in our old house. You seemed happy."

She broke eye contact with him. This conversation was beginning to make her feel uncomfortable. "I was happy. For whatever reasons, I enjoyed my time with you."

He nodded. "I just wanted to make sure that I hadn't dreamed that up, that you really were happy. Thank you for admitting it. I know it took a lot of courage."

"What do you mean by that?" Sydney walked back to where she had left the clothes he had handed her. Knowing that she probably didn't have to be shy around Sark, she pulled off her dress and stepped into the sweatpants and long-sleeve t-shirt.

"I know that you don't trust me completely. You still see me as a killer, which I have to admit I still am. And I know that I scare you a lot of the time we're together. I don't want to, but I do."

"You haven't scared me that much lately," she said as she leaned against the wall. "You've been too busy being an indispensable help to frighten me."

He nodded again but didn't say anything in return.

"So what exactly is this problem we have on our hands?" she asked. "You promised me that you would explain when you got me to safety. I assume that this place is as safe as it comes in Russia." 

Sark smiled weakly and motioned for her to sit down. "You're not going to like what I'm about to tell you, Sydney. In fact, I'm one hundred percent positive you won't believe me. That was part of the reason I wanted to make sure that you were happy in the time you spent with me. Knowing that you trust me at least on a small level enough to be happy, that'll probably be vital to you accepting what I'm about to tell you."

"Remember what I said about you not scaring me? I take that back."

"I'm sorry if this is scaring you. I'm just trying to ease into this gently. Like I said, you're not going to believe me at initially. Which is why I was in St. Petersburg in the first place. I had to get some concrete proof to show you. Though judging by what happened, I probably shouldn't have waited so long to show you."

"Okay. Slow down. Start from the beginning."

"When we were living together, during your missing two years, you told me about your struggle to come to terms with who SD-6 was, with who your father was, with who you were. You pretty much told me everything that had gone on in your life from the death of Daniel Hecht to realizing that you were in love with your handler, Michael Vaughn."

"I really told you all of that?"

"You trusted me then. Just like I believe you trust me now. Which is why this is going to hurt so much."

"Tell me," she insisted.

"I had a hunch by the stories you told me that something was wrong with your job at the CIA. So I started investigating it. You found out and told me to stop. I realized that you were probably comparing this situation to when you told Will Tippin to stop investigating Danny's death. So I did. I never found the answers I was searching for. Then, you turned back up in my life a few weeks ago. You seemed so willing to give our love another shot. But there was one roadblock."

"Vaughn," Sydney supplied. Her face paled. "You didn't do anything to hurt him, did you? You weren't the one that started the fire?"

"No," he answered honestly. "I know that hurting Michael Vaughn would wound you too much. Though at times I've really wished that I had just killed him and ended your pain."

"That's a horrible thing to say."

"Not so horrible if you knew what I knew. I wasn't the one who started the fire, Sydney. Michael Vaughn was."

She stared at him in shock. "I don't believe you. Why would Vaughn set a fire that you claim had the purpose of killing me?"

"Because technically Michael Vaughn didn't start it." Sark took a deep breath and sat down next to Sydney. He grasped her hand and looked her straight in the eye. "Michael Vaughn doesn't exist."

"I don't understand. Vaughn has been my handler for years now. Of course he exists."

"The man you know as Michael Vaughn isn't really him. A drunk driver killed Michael Vaughn when he was nine years old."

Sydney shook her head furiously. "This makes no sense. Why are you doing this? What do you have to gain from telling me this?"

  
"I have nothing to gain and everything to lose. Which is the one thing going for me. The one thing that might actually make you calm down and listen to all that I'm about to say." Sark reached into his pocket and pulled out a disk. "Thankfully, the fire didn't effect this. Do you recognize it?"

"That's the disk that you made during our mission yesterday."

"Right. This is the proof I had been searching for about my hunch a few years back. I continued my search when I realized that you were going to chose Vaughn over me."

"I never said I was going to chose Vaughn."

"You were, Sydney. He was the easy, comfortable choice. And that's exactly what you need right now. Which is just another reason why this is so hard."

"Obviously, I'm pretty damn rational right now. So explain to me how the Vaughn I know doesn't really exist."

Sark nodded and placed the disk in her open hand. "Michael Vaughn got killed when he was nine. At the time, his mother, William Vaughn's wife, was working for the KGB along with your mother. That was the reason your mother was ordered to kill William Vaughn. He had begun to suspect his wife of working for the KGB. Their superiors decided he needed to be eliminated, and Antoinette Vaughn shouldn't have any physical part in it."

  
"So, my mother killed Vaughn's father so that his mother wouldn't be pinpointed? This whole thing isn't that believable."

  
"Nothing in our lives is believable. Which is why you should believe me now. The real Michael Vaughn's death was innocent and had nothing to do with any organization. However, Antoinette was pulled out of her assignment. Her son's death was covered up completely, and she was taken to a KGB safe house in France. She lived there for eight years without anyone being the wiser."

"Eight years in a safe house? She must have gone nearly insane," Sydney joked.

"I would be mad at you for your inappropriate humor if I didn't know it was one of your defense mechanisms." Sydney glared at him. "After eight years, she was assigned a young agent by the name of Dmitri Renaldi. By this time, your mother had faked her death, and Antoinette had become a member of the Man's organization."

"Everything you're telling me, my mother already knew about?"

  
"No. She had no clue that this was going on. Antoinette was keeping her own side operation. Your mother only knew that her old friend had become unquestionably distraught all of the sudden about her late husband's ordered assassination and chose to leave the country. She didn't know about Michael Vaughn's death."

"My mother was innocent of this all?" she asked.

"Completely. Antoinette Vaughn's side operations concerned the CIA. She wanted to plant a mole in the CIA to filter back useful information to her. This was her way of moving up in your mother's organization."

"Basically, you're telling me that the man I know as Michael Vaughn is really Dmitri Renaldi."

"Yes." Sark looked at Sydney concerned as he saw tears begin to fall down her cheeks. "Are you all right?"

  
"It's a little hard to process. The man I loved was a double agent. And I never once realized it."

"Renaldi is an exceptionally good agent." He sighed. "I'm sorry to have to tell you this, Syd. He took it upon himself to get close to you. To even start a romantic relationship with you. He saw it as advantageous."

Sydney turned away from him and took a moment to try to recompose herself. When the tears finally stopped, she turned back towards Sark. "So, this man started the fire tonight? The fire that was meant to kill me?"

"Yes. The information I stole from the Covenant tonight explained that he was working for them. And that he was being ordered to take you out because you were a proven asset to the CIA."

"Glad to know my work is appreciated," she said.

"I came to the hotel to stop him from achieving his objective. His hotel room was empty though. It looks like he set some sort of timer device to cause the fire and left. By the time I realized this, it was too late to stop the fire. The only thing I could think of was getting to your room and getting you out."

Sydney nodded automatically to let him know she was listening. She wasn't sure she was actually processing this new information, though.

"This is too much for you," he declared. "I shouldn't have laid it all on you at once. I apologize."

"It's just a lot to process," she replied. Breaking out of her small trance, she noticed that he had gotten up from the couch and was heading to the door. "Where are you going?"

"You probably want to be alone with your thoughts right now. There's a lot for you to sort out."

"Don't go," she insisted for the second time that night.

He turned back towards her. "I don't think it would be a good idea for me to stay right now."

"I don't care if it's a good idea or not. I want you here." She gave him a smile. He noticed that it was rather weak, but at least it seemed genuine.

She got up from her seat on the couch and grasped his hand, leading him over to the bed. "Just stay with me through the night. That's all I ask."

"Sydney, you should know by now that I'd willingly stay with you for as long as you wanted me, too. You're my top priority."

She lay down while pulling him next to her. He smiled to himself as she pulled his arm around her midsection. There had been many times in their two years together that she had done this very action in the middle of the night. It was surprisingly nice to realize, then and now, that she didn't want to lose physical contact with him.

"I think you're processing this whole thing amazingly well," he whispered in her ear.

She shifted her body so that she was facing him. "Can I tell you the real reason why that is?"

"You can tell me whatever you want."

She leaned over so that her head was snuggled in next to him. "I was going to tell Vaughn that it was over."

"That what was over?" Sark asked, not understanding.

"That our relationship was over. That it wasn't working. You see, there was the little problem of me being in love with another man." Sydney looked up into his eyes. "I was going to choose you, Julian. I was always going to choose you."

Sark looked at her in awe. He had no idea what to say.

"I figure that I've gotten through a lot of hard stuff in my life. I can get through this. I'm not going to deny that I'm not hurt. Because I am really aching inside. A man I trusted with my life was using me." She laughed. "I think I finally know what my father was talking about when he tried to explain his feelings towards my mother."

She smiled at him again and sniffed his neck lightly. "I always loved the smell that was distinctly yours. I can remember that from our two years together."

"You're getting your memory back?"

"Bit by bit and rather slowly, but yes, I am. And I'm happy. Happy to finally be able to know what it was like to be with a man I loved and trusted completely. A man who was so willing to give everything up just to be with me."

"I'm still willing, Sydney," he said, smiling down at her.

She sat up and looked at him. "We're going to figure this out, you know."

"Figure what out?"

"How to make this work. Figure out how to live our lives together. It won't be easy. But I'm willing to try if you are."

"You know, those were the exact words you said to me after I proposed. You said that we were going to figure out how to make this work, how to live our lives together."

"Listen to me. I'm extremely intelligent."

"I know that," Sark said as he pulled her in close again. "I love you, Sydney. There was never any one else in the world for me but you."

"It took me awhile, but I think the same goes for me. I can honestly say that I love you, too. And this time I'm not going to let that feeling slip through my fingers." She leaned in and kissed him softly and slowly. "You are mine forever."

"I've been waiting a long time for you to realize that."

"Well, I know it now. And nothing will ever be the same. Not now that I found you." 

She could feel her eyes begin to droop shut. And she wasn't scared of what was to come in her dreams. Because she had made her choice and she couldn't be any happier.


End file.
